This is mostly interesting because of the fairly extreme manufacturing processes involved in building an iPhone. I'm not an expert, but it does not seem to be a product you can just crank out easily on an existing line. It seems like the outlay to build/set up the factory would be huge, and would take quite a while to ramp up.



Maybe if all the parts are from suppliers elsewhere and they're just assembling in India it's not as much expense and overhead to tool out the factory? Or maybe it's really not as hard as I'm imagining and/or there's already a lot of infrastructure in place.



Either way, it seems like Apple must be expecting to sell a huge number of devices or it wouldn't be worth the investment.



I imagine from a supply chain perspective, if the product is of identical quality and the cost of production is comparable, the more companies and locations making your stuff the better. Lets you pit manufacturers against each other, and gives you backup options if your main partner has problems for whatever reason.