Made in India' iPhone 6s ready to hit shelves: Report

A few months ago, there were rumours of Apple manufacturing the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus locally in India in a bid to drive down the costs of its 2015 flagship smartphone. The Economic Times now reports that Apple’s manufacturing contractor in India, Wistron, has already started the production of the iPhone 6s at their Bengaluru facility and the units will reach the stores pretty soon.

The Wistron facility at Bengaluru has been locally manufacturing the iPhone SE in India since May 2017, which has indirectly resulted in a reduction of the effective price for the consumers. The iPhone 6s has started its innings at the Indian production facility and could soon see considerable drop in prices, which will eventually help Apple compete with premium midrange smartphones in the Indian market. However, the production hasn’t started at full swing, which means that Apple is still importing a considerable amount of iPhone 6s units from its international manufacturing facilities. Therefore, don’t expect the iPhone 6s prices to go down immediately.

However, it seems that Apple hasn’t stopped here. It’s reported that Apple is considering expanding the local production facility by initiating manufacturing of more iPhone models in the near future. This means that we could see the older models, such as the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 8 over the course of time, before finally seeing the latest models in production, ensuring lower prices in the future.

The iPhone 6s is estimated to contribute approximately a third of Apple’s total iPhone sales in India, according to Hong Kong’s Counterpoint Research. The iPhone SE, meanwhile, has found to comprise only 15 per cent of total market share amongst all iPhone models. The iPhone 6s is based on the older dual-core A9 CPU, albeit with access to the latest iOS updates. The 6s sports a 4.7-inch LCD display with 3D Touch. Unlike the newer models, it still sports the 3.5mm headphone jack alongside the Lightning Port. You can get the base 32GB iPhone 6s for Rs 34,999 presently from e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart.

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