India Weighs Plum Incentives To Lure Apple, Dell, HP As China's COVID-19 Lockdowns Weigh

India wants to boost the production of tablets and laptops to cut imports and make the country an export hub in the longer term.
The federal technology ministry explored payments that could exceed half a billion dollars per company, Bloomberg reports.
India plans to boost the financial incentives for tablet and laptop manufacturers, wooing companies like Apple Inc AAPL, Dell Technologies Inc DELL, and HP Inc HPQ to widen or begin local production.
Notably, India wants to court Apple, which already assembles iPhones in India via its Taiwanese suppliers, to make iPads locally.
India weighed offering up to INR 45 billion ($549 million) per manufacturer.
To qualify, foreign companies must invest INR 7 billion in India over five years in addition to the outlays they have made through March 2021.
The incentives could go as high as the equivalent of about 6% of the sales of finished products.
Apple began making its new iPhone 14 in India sooner than anticipated cutting the lag between Chinese and Indian output.
Chinese consumers bought fewer iPhone 14 handsets in the early days of its availability than the product's predecessor a year ago, marking a rare double-digit decline.
Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL Google urged Indian manufacturers to submit bids to assemble up to 1 million units of its Pixel smartphones since China's strict COVID-19 lockdown caused massive production delays.
Vedanta Ltd and critical Apple supplier Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd HNHAF, operating as Foxconn, shared plans to invest $19.5 billion to set up semiconductor plants in India.
Price Action: AAPL shares traded lower by 2.59% at $145.96 in the premarket on the last check Thursday.