Wistron returns after handing over Apple plant to Tata Group, other companies are increasing units, know the reason.

New Delhi: Apple’s iPhone maker Wistron in India has consolidated its operations from Bengaluru. Wistron has pulled out of Apple India’s iPhone making business and has started packing its bags by handing over the work to Tata Group. Preparations are on to sell Wistron’s iPhone assembly unit in Kolar near Bengaluru to the Tata group. The Tata Group is currently trialling the assembling of the iPhone 15 model at the Wistron iPhone assembling unit in Kolar. The interesting fact is that Wistron is winding up operations from India and Apple’s other contract makers Foxconn and Pegatron are rapidly expanding their operations in India.

In the year 2017, Wistron was the first of the 3 contract manufacturers of Apple to start operations in India. Wistron, which has sold its plant to the Tata Group, has not been able to penetrate Apple’s supply chain.

Wistron is bringing it back due to failure in component manufacturing and holding of vendor management. Taiwan’s contract manufacturing had to withdraw business from India because of this.

India is the largest smartphone market in the world. Wistron could not keep pace with the work culture of India. In December 2020, there was violence in Apple’s Wistron unit. The workers were creating a ruckus demanding salary, the Wistron company had to suffer a loss of ₹430 crore due to this.

This unit of Wistron was put on probation by Apple and it was told to wait till the damage done is compensated. After this, work started in Wistron’s unit in February 2021.

Till last Wednesday, over 400 senior production staff were protesting against the management of Wistron. They were demanding equality in terms of pay with junior contract workers.
The deal between the Tata group and Wistron is yet to be finalised, but a Tata executive has taken over the work at the Wistron unit in Kolar. Wistron decided to shift operations from India because it did not see long-term benefits from assembly of the final product here. Wistron has decided to sell its Indian unit to Tata Group and focus on IT manufacturing business in countries like Vietnam and Mexico.