Apple iPhone 15 Launch: India-Made Model Could Be Available to Indian Customers Soon

Apple is all set to launch the iPhone 15 Series, Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 at its “Wonderlust” event tomorrow, September 12. And this year, the iPhone 15 series is being touted as representing a huge change. Adopting USB-C as a standard port – replacing the decades-old Lightning connector.

Apart from the move to USB-C and the plethora of new upgrades that the new phones bring to the table – another big change – especially in India, would be the availability of “Made in India” iPhone 15 units right from launch – or at least – close to launch in the Indian market.

The Economic Times reports that Apple may be preparing to make the ‘Made in India’ iPhone 15 available in India almost simultaneously with its global launch. And Apple is using the Foxconn facility in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, to bring the iPhone 15 to the Indian market in mid-September — closing the gap to the global launch to just a few days, if not simultaneously.

Last year, Apple took nearly 10 days after the global launch of the iPhone 14 to start manufacturing the vanilla iPhone 14 at Foxconn’s Tamil Nadu factory. However, this year the iPhone maker has prepared ahead of time and is set to make the iPhone 15 units made in India available to Indian customers before they are exported to other regions.

Last year, Apple confirmed that it will manufacture the iPhone 14 in India in a statement to PTI. “We are excited to manufacture iPhone 14 in India. The new iPhone 14 lineup introduces groundbreaking new technologies and important security features,” Apple said in September 2022.

According to estimates, it probably took Apple until the end of September to offer the Indian-made iPhone 14 to Indian customers. But this time things might change as reported. So if the Chennai-made phones are ready for sale in India when the global launch happens, it would indicate that Apple is paying more attention to its Indian production and that India is becoming a more important target for the American tech company.

In particular, this does not mean that Apple released the iPhone 14 models late in India. In fact, the models were available in India right in line with the September 16 global launch – the same time as the US launch. It’s just that they weren’t “Indian” units.