Besides being one of the important automobile manufacturing hubs in Asia as perfectly prefixed as a 'Detroit of Asia', Chennai has now been given with a proud and special name at the global stage as the city would be a pioneer for India after one of the world's most reputed smartphone brands 'Apple' has started manufacturing one of its flagship devices in Chennai. 

The significant development of the company's pick of Chennai over China has been dubbed as a win for the Center's initiatives of 'Make in India' and 'Aatma Nirbhar India'. Apple would be manufacturing its top model iPhone 11 at Chennai's Foxconn plant and this has been described as the first time that Apple has manufactured a top of the line model in India, that additionally gives a strong corridor for Chennai in being a global investment and manufacturing destination.

Confirming the news, India's Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal took to Twitter on Friday and said, 'Significant boost to Make in India! Apple has started manufacturing iPhone 11 in India, bringing a top of the line model for the first time in the country'. According to the reports, the announcement from Apple of manufacturing iPhone 11 in Chennai has come nearly nine months after the global brand has begun the assembly line for the iPhone XR in India.  By citing this as a humble beginning, Union Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the Narendra Modi government has developed the mobile phone manufacturing ecosystem in India.

Apple has also been planning to manufacture the iPhone SE 2020 in India in Bangalore's Wistron plant, which is one of the suppliers for the company's smartphone models. Although its first time for India in manufacturing the flagship device of the California based company, Apple has started locally manufacturing iPhones in India in May 2017 with the iPhone SE in Bangalore's Wistron plant.

In October 2019, the smartphone brand has started manufacturing the iPhone XR locally in India. The reports stated that Foxconn, which is one of the leading suppliers for Apple, has, earlier this month, announced that it has planned to invest $1 billion in India to enhance and expand its factory in the country.  

Following Foxconn, the second-largest iPhone assembler for Apple - Pegatron has also been planning to invest in India to set up a subsidiary in the future. The reports stated that one of the reasons why Apple picked India is due to the prevalence of the tensioning relations between the US and China. Earlier, it's certain that a large number of iPhones would be assembled in China but for this time, Apple skipped China and picked Chennai for its flagship device of iPhone 11.

The move has also be seen as Apple's decision to refrain from relying and depending on China for assembling its products and India's demand over smartphones would also be one of the reasons for expanding its market. According to the data, India currently has over 50 crore smartphone users through which the smartphones have become one of the crucial markers in the country.