Apple set an all-time revenue record in India in the three months to Sept. 26, Chief Executive John Ternus told analysts on Nov. 2, as the company reported a September-quarter record of US$114.5 billion in global sales. The Indian factories that build its phones are growing faster, but corporate filings show they still buy much of what goes into each handset from abroad.

For investors in Asia, the two sides of that picture matter. India is now a second production base for Apple's supply chain alongside China, drawing contract manufacturers, component makers and state subsidies. Yet the value India keeps from each phone it assembles remains limited, and New Delhi's newest incentive program is built around raising it.

Apple's India Sales and the Tata Electronics Ledger

Apple's results release showed quarterly revenue up 12% from a year earlier and full fiscal-year revenue of $479 billion, a record. On the call, Ternus said the company also set a September-quarter high for iPhone upgraders in India, and Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh said Mac sales and services revenue hit all-time records in the country, according to ETElectronicsWorld.

Apple's local sales arm is already large. Apple India reported sales of 103,853 crore rupees and a net profit of 5,311 crore rupees in the fiscal year ended March 2026, The Economic Times reported, citing registrar of companies filings.

The same set of filings gives a clearer view of the manufacturing side. Three Tata Electronics entities, which assemble iPhones, reported combined export revenue of 99,128 crore rupees in FY26, up 29% from 76,953 crore rupees a year earlier. The paper noted that the comparison is not exact, because the former Wistron unit, now Tata Electronics System Solutions, filed a 15-month period in FY25. The third entity is the former Pegatron plant, in which Tata Electronics holds 60% and Pegatron keeps 40%.

The ledger has another column. The three companies' combined foreign exchange outgo reached 129,641 crore rupees, more than their foreign exchange earnings, the report said. That points to heavy use of imported parts, though the outgo can also include licensing fees and other charges that the filings did not itemize.

Exports made up about 76% of the units' reported production revenue. Shipments to Taiwan, at 47,930 crore rupees, were larger than those to the United States, at 38,508 crore rupees, while Ireland took 11,980 crore rupees. Tata Electronics posted a consolidated net loss of 1,611 crore rupees, wider than a 69 crore rupee loss a year earlier, even as consolidated operating revenue nearly doubled to 129,902 crore rupees.

The Government's Case for Phone Subsidies

The figures arrive during a public argument over whether India's smartphone incentives pay off. On Oct. 28, Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw responded to a news report that questioned the model. In a post on X, he said the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for mobile phones had paid out 19,000 crore rupees in incentives and generated 25,000 crore rupees in direct taxes plus 3,000 crore rupees in goods and services tax, DD News reported, citing ANI. He said electronics manufacturing employs 2.5 million people, 1.2 million of them in mobile phones.

That PLI scheme for large-scale electronics ended on March 31, 2026. Its successor, the Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme, has an outlay of 62,500 crore rupees and runs from FY27 through FY31. It pays 2.25% to 5% on eligible phone sales, with up to 1.5 percentage points more for sourcing key components and sub-assemblies at home, according to the DD News report. The ministry expects cumulative phone production of about 39 lakh crore rupees over the scheme's life.

A separate program targets the parts gap that the Tata filings expose. By mid-August, the government had approved 106 projects under the Electronics Component Manufacturing Scheme, with committed investment of 69,548 crore rupees, Electronics For You reported. Vaishnaw said then that domestic makers meet about 45% of India's demand for printed circuit boards. Projects nearing operation included a Dixon Technologies camera module plant in Noida and a facility of Yuzhan Technology, a Foxconn company, the outlet reported.

Where the Factories Are

Production is concentrated in the south. Tamil Nadu, home to all of Apple's iPhone contract manufacturers, accounted for almost $20 billion of India's electronics exports in FY26, Singai G. Ramachandran, chief executive of the Tamil Nadu Startup and Innovation Mission, said on Nov. 2. He said the state's share had almost doubled in two years.

That clustering helps suppliers locate near assemblers, which is the outcome the new local-sourcing bonus is designed to reward. Their output feeds India's monthly industrial production figures, where overall growth slowed to 6.7% in September.

The next test is the ratio in the Tata filings. If plants approved under the component scheme begin shipping, foreign exchange outgo should start to fall relative to export earnings in FY27 accounts. Apple, for its part, opens the holiday quarter with the iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro on sale, and it pays its next dividend of 27 cents a share on Nov. 16.