iPhone maker Foxconn to invest $600 million into phone and chip project in India

Foxconn will invest more than $600 million in India as part of a phone manufacturing project and separately a semiconductor equipment facility, according to the government of the state of Karnataka.

In a tweet on Wednesday, M B Patil, Karnataka’s minister of commerce said the Taiwanese firm and U.S. chip firm Applied Materials pledged to invest more than $360 million into a phone casing component plant and some $240 million into a semiconductor equipment manufacturing project.

The phone project will create employment opportunities for 12,000 people, Patil said, while the semiconductor facility will generate employment for 1,000 people.

Foxconn is one of the world’s biggest contract electronics manufacturers. It is best known as the main assembler of Apple’s iPhones but the company has been looking to diversify both geographically and in terms of its portfolio of products.

Foxconn’s main operations are in China, where it runs the world’s largest iPhone factory. But India, which has been pushing to bring high-tech manufacturing to the country, has been a target of Foxconn’s expansion plans.

Source: cnbc