Can Apple really make its iPhones in India? | Who said what? #22

Hello, Welcome to another episode of Who said what? I’m Krishna and this is the show where I dive into interesting comments by notable figures from across the world—whether it’s finance or the broader business world—and dig into the stories behind them.

Today I have 3 very interesting comments for you. It’s about whether Apple can really make its iPhones in India, getting all our electricity from renewable energy and for the third one something that the World Bank’s President recently said.

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Can Apple make its iPhones in India?

When Donald Trump was on a roll and increased tariffs on Chinese goods to 145%, global trade took a hit—but for Apple, it felt personal. Although, he has paused the tariffs for now but you can never be certain when it’s him. The thing is this wasn’t just about paying more to ship goods across the Pacific. It was a direct threat to how Apple builds everything: iPhones, iPads, MacBooks. Because almost all of it, almost always, has been made in China.

Trump’s trade war was chaotic. Companies rushed to beat the tariff deadline, freight costs soared, and inventory piled up. Apple even chartered jets to fly iPhones out of its plant in Chennai to the U.S., just to stay ahead of the tariff clock. But the real question wasn’t how quickly Apple could fly phones out.

It was: could Apple ever actually move out of China? That’s the bigger and the most important question.

At first glance, it looks like Apple’s working on it. Tim Cook recently said in their earnings call that "most of our U.S. iPhones will be manufactured in India."

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iPhones, for your context, contributes to more than 50% of Apple’s revenue, that’s a really large number.

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The company has been setting up plants in Chennai, and there’s been a lot of noise about India becoming the next great manufacturing hub.

So is Apple finally pulling the plug on China?

The answer to this in my mind seems a little possible. I am not an expert so I was listening to Patrick McGee—former Apple reporter at the Financial Times and now the author of the book Apple in China to understand his view on this. In an interview with rest of world he said that this whole idea that Apple is moving to India is more perception than reality. He adds this caveat:

"If next year you buy an iPhone and it says 'Made in India' on the box, that phone will not be any less dependent on the China-centric supply chain than any other iPhone you have ever purchased."

And the reasons are deep. In a podcast interview, Patrick McGee said that Apple didn’t just find China convenient—it helped build modern China’s manufacturing muscle. "Apple trained the Chinese workforce from scratch," he says. When Apple wanted translucent plastics, miniaturized circuits, or aluminum casings with perfect color gradients, those skills didn’t exist in China. Apple flew in its best engineers to teach them. He describes it as "tacit knowledge"—the kind of experience you can’t write down in a manual, only learn by doing.

In fact, Apple trained over 28 million workers in China since 2008. McGee calls that more than just outsourcing. He compares it to America’s Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II—but for China. And Apple poured in not just labor but capital: at one point, $55 billion a year into Chinese infrastructure, talent, and machinery.

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So yes, Apple might screw in the final parts in India. But everything leading up to that—chips, screens, sensors, cameras—is still built in China. The suppliers? Mostly Chinese firms like BYD, Luxshare, Goertek, and Wingtech. McGee calls it the “red supply chain.”

And when you zoom out, the scale difference becomes even starker. Apple went from making zero phones in China in 1999 to 200 million a year by 2009. It took them 10 years to do that. In contrast, India began assembling phones in 2017. By 2024, it had made 25 million—barely a tenth of what China managed, and at a much slower pace.

And yet, the challenge is not just scale—it’s speed. In the podcast, McGee tells a story of Apple engineers visiting a Chinese factory that needed a complete machinery overhaul. They expected it to take two or three weeks. It was done overnight. Foxconn, Apple’s biggest supplier, had replaced everything without being asked, just to win future orders. That’s the kind of speed and initiative that China offers, and India isn’t close to matching it.

United Airlines even set up dedicated first-class flights to carry Apple engineers to and from China three times a week. That’s quite crazy.

But now Apple is stuck.

McGee puts it simply: "Apple needs to walk out of China, but they can't run."

If they leave too fast, and they risk a crackdown from Beijing. And if they move too slow, and they’re vulnerable to geopolitical shocks—like Trump’s tariffs.

And if that wasn’t complicated enough Trump out of nowhere, apparently told Tim Cook that Apple shouldn’t make iPhones in India. But, then some sources say that a govt official has said there is no change in Apple’s investment plan in India.

I don’t know what to make of this situation.

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Can You Run an Electricity Grid Entirely on Renewables?

Everyone talks about “net zero” electricity—but does that mean 100% renewable power is possible? Kashish, from the team, had this question and he was listening to The Cleaning Up podcast where an expert named Anders Lindberg talked about whether we can run an electricity grid entirely on renewables like wind and solar.

Technically, yes, we can do it. But practically, he explained, it would be incredibly expensive—about €65 trillion extra globally by 2050. He said this:

"The study found that integrating flexible engine plants alongside renewables would save €65 trillion by 2050, reduce CO₂ emissions by 21%, and significantly cut down renewable energy curtailment."

But why is getting to 100% renewable energy so tough? The main challenge is something called "grid stability." If that sounds like greek and latin to you, I get it. That’s exactly what I thought when Kashish mentioned it.

But, it’s interesting. Let me take you through it.

Grid stability basically means making sure electricity keeps flowing steadily and reliably. There are two key parts to it:

1. Supply must always match demand exactly. When you switch on your lights, that electricity must be generated at that precise moment.

2. The grid's frequency and voltage need to stay steady—like Europe’s standard of 50 Hz. Any imbalance can cause blackouts or equipment damage.

Traditional power plants like coal, gas, or nuclear help maintain this stability because they can adjust their output quickly. They have large, spinning turbines that naturally help keep things steady. Think of these turbines as giant bicycle wheels—they resist sudden changes.

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Renewables like solar and wind are trickier. They depend entirely on weather conditions, which we can't control. Solar panels produce energy when the sun shines; wind turbines spin when there's wind. This unpredictability makes it harder to match supply with constant demand. Also, wind and solar usually don't have heavy spinning parts. They produce direct current (DC), which needs to be converted to alternating current (AC), causing fluctuations.

Why High Renewable Levels Make Stability Harder

When renewables make up a small portion of the grid (like 20-50%), it's manageable. Grid operators balance variability using traditional plants. But pushing renewables towards 80%, 90%, or 100% amplifies two big challenges:

1. Variable Supply vs. Constant Demand: With high renewable penetration, if there’s a cloudy, windless day, you might not have enough electricity. On sunny, windy days, you might produce too much electricity and have to discard some.
   

2. Reduced Grid Inertia and Frequency Control: Renewables lack the inertia traditional plants have. Without inertia, sudden disturbances (like a big power plant shutting down) can sharply alter grid frequency, leading to blackouts. For instance, in April 2025, Spain and Portugal faced a huge blackout because the grid didn't have enough stability mechanisms to handle rapid changes when several renewable plants disconnected.

How to Keep a High-Renewable Grid Stable

So how can we practically maintain stability on a renewable-heavy grid? There are three main strategies:

1. Overbuilding Renewable Capacity: You can build way more renewable capacity than you typically need. If you have five times the necessary solar and wind installations, even bad weather might still produce enough electricity. However, this method is costly and inefficient. It's like buying five cars so at least one always runs.
   
   A recent Ember report illustrated this clearly. Getting to 50% renewables isn’t hard, but pushing towards 100% means nearly five times the solar capacity and massive battery storage—making electricity 3.5 times more expensive.

2. Energy Storage: Storing excess renewable energy in batteries or other storage systems (like pumped hydro or hydrogen) can help. Batteries can quickly respond to grid fluctuations, acting like shock absorbers. But massive storage requirements make this approach expensive and impractical. Similar to oversizing, huge batteries would mostly sit idle, waiting for rare emergencies.

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3. Flexible Backup Generation: A more practical solution involves using a small amount of flexible, on-demand generation—like gas turbines or engines powered by biogas or hydrogen—that you only use when renewables fall short. Anders Lindberg explained that allowing just around 4% of electricity to come from flexible fossil gas plants during peak times could save €65 trillion compared to a purely renewable approach. That’s because those last few percentage points of renewable reliability are extremely costly.

Flexible generation sources can quickly adjust their output on demand, unlike baseload plants (nuclear or coal) that run steadily. Natural gas plants are highly flexible and ideal for quickly balancing renewables' variability.

So, can an electricity grid run entirely on renewables? Technically, yes. Practically, it’s very challenging and expensive, especially as you approach the final few percent. Most experts suggest aiming for about 80–90% renewables, using a small portion of flexible backup sources like gas to handle rare peaks or dips. This balanced approach significantly reduces costs and complexity while still cutting carbon emissions dramatically.

Of course, relying on flexible backup has its own challenges—like ensuring a secure and reliable supply of fuel—but that’s a discussion for another day.

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Ajay Banga has mixed feeling about India?

By now you are already aware how uncertain are the times we live in. There’s so much happening in the world that you never know what might happen tomorrow. Or what Trump might say tomorrow.

Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank, spoke to CNBC TV18 recently. He spoke across a bunch of topics but for the sake of this episode I’ll stick to what he said on India.

See, India aims to become a high-income country by 2047. That's a huge leap from where we currently stand. And he even says that this is "a really cool target to aim for." It’s a vision, he argues, that can genuinely unite and inspire a nation. But here's the catch—getting there isn't straightforward.

"I don't measure things in straight lines."

He’s acknowledging the fact that growth isn’t really a linear path, at some point we will be in hyopergrowth phase and sometimes things might not move even a little bit.

Today, as I mentioned in the beginning, the world sits on a tightrope with global economic uncertainties. There’s tariffs, trade wars, Trump's unpredictable tweets, and so many more things that are happening on a more local level. This is exactly the sentiment that Ajay Banga shares as well. He insists that if uncertainty and volatility persist, "definitely there will be a slowdown in global growth." Yet, he quickly adds an optimistic note:

"You don't know if tomorrow or the next ten days two or three trade deals get signed and all of a sudden people will say less uncertainty."

He even gives the example of the recent UK-India Free Trade Agreement as an example. We wrote about this in The Daily Brief as well, I’ll link it in the description below. And, it’s not just another trade deal. It symbolizes a larger global trend—where regional and bilateral agreements are redefining globalization itself. He captures this evolution brilliantly, pointing out that in the last decade alone, 100 such trade deals have come into existence, reshaping economies silently yet significantly.

But there's a deeper issue here. The traditional model of globalization—outsourcing jobs from developed countries to developing ones purely based on labor and logistics cost advantages—is no longer sustainable. "The real fundamental issue," he emphasizes, is how this model, beneficial in theory, disrupts individual lives in developed economies without offering immediate replacements.

"Unless you believe that that person seamlessly moved into an outstanding higher productivity, higher-paid job—which did not happen—you have to believe this model cannot "

So, what’s the new model?

Here, he lays down a compelling vision centered around five strategic sectors that hold the key to sustainable job creation: infrastructure, agriculture as a business, primary healthcare, quality tourism, and value-added manufacturing.

When talking infrastructure, he doesn't merely mean roads or buildings but rather what infrastructure enables: "bridges, roads, airports, schools, skilling institutes, digitization, healthcare, electricity." In agriculture, he draws inspiration from India's cooperative giant Amul, saying, "That requires an example like lAmul to be repeated many times over," underlining the potential for cooperative agriculture to transform rural economies.

Primary healthcare is another essential sector that Banga spotlights—creating jobs while significantly cutting healthcare costs through early diagnosis of diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Tourism, he argues, remains deeply undervalued in India.

He starkly compares:

"New York City gets 62 million [tourists] a year… India, with its culture, beaches, mountains, history, food, shopping, fabulous people, there's much m ore that we can do here."

India’s number is somewhere around 20 million people.

Manufacturing could also be transformative—but it isn't without risks. He urgently points out that logistics costs in India remain alarmingly high. His message to policymakers is clear:

"If you don't seize it quickly, the moment will pass us by."

In the regional context, he brings an insightful critique: "Intra-regional trade is abysmally low" in South Asia. He proposes concrete solutions like connecting electricity grids between countries like India and Sri Lanka—realistic yet powerful examples of regional integration.

It's clear he's advocating a shift in global thinking—one that is more equitable, sustainable, and inclusive. And perhaps that’s exactly what we need in these uncertain times.

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Please let me know what you think of this edition🙂

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Introducing “What the hell is happening?”

In an era where everything seems to be breaking simultaneously—geopolitics, economics, climate systems, social norms—this new tried to make sense of the present.

"What the hell is happening?" is deliberately messy, more permanent draft than polished product. Each edition examines the collision of mega-trends shaping our world: from the stupidity of trade wars and the weaponization of interdependence, to great power competition and planetary-scale challenges we're barely equipped to comprehend.

We’re learning the wrong lessons from history

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