India Overtakes China As Top Smartphone Supplier For US In Q2 2025: Canalys

New Delhi: Amid the US president Donald Trump’s tariff uncertainties, India has, for the first time, overtaken China as the leading supplier of smartphones to the US, led by Apple’s aggressive ramp-up of iPhone production in India. Marking a major shift in global electronics manufacturing, this milestone has been achieved in the June quarter in the current calendar year due to Apple’s continued push to diversify its supply chain and scale up iPhone assembly in India, according to the Canalys research report.

The report comes at a time from Canalys (now part of Omdia), when the uncertain outcome of negotiations with China has reportedly accelerated supply chain reorientation. “The US smartphone shipments grew 1 per cent in Q2 as vendors continued to frontload device inventories amid tariff concerns. Despite these supply chain shifts and a 38 percent year-on-year rise in Samsung’s US-bound shipments — largely driven by its Galaxy A-series — overall smartphone shipments to the US rose just 1 percent in the June quarter,” the report said.

However, the share of US smartphone shipments assembled in China fell to 25 per cent in the April-June period, from 61 per cent a year earlier. “Most of this decline has been picked up by India; the total volume of ‘Made-in-India’ smartphones grew 240 per cent year-on-year and now accounts for 44 per cent of smartphones imported into the US, up from only 13 percent of smartphone shipments in Q2 2024,” the report said.

Commenting on the development, Sanyam Chaurasia, principal analyst at Canalys, said that India became the leading manufacturing hub for smartphones sold in the US for the very first time in Q2 2025, largely driven by Apple’s accelerated supply chain shift to India amid an uncertain trade landscape between the US and China.

“Apple has scaled up its production capacity in India over the last several years as a part of its ‘China Plus One’ strategy and has opted to dedicate most of its export capacity in India to supply the US market so far in 2025. Apple has begun manufacturing and assembling Pro models of the iPhone 16 series in India, but is still dependent on established manufacturing bases in China for the scaled supply needed for Pro models in the US,” Chaurasia said.

Samsung and Motorola, he said, have also increased their share of US-targeted supply from India, although their shifts are significantly slower and smaller in scale than Apple’s. “Motorola, similar to Apple, has its core manufacturing hub in China, whereas Samsung relies mainly on producing its smartphones in Vietnam,” he noted.

Canalys’ another senior analyst Runar Bjorhovde also said that vendors continue to frontload devices and maintain high inventory levels to best cope with the risk of tariffs coming into play later in the year. “Yet, the market only grew one percent, indicating tepid demand in an increasingly pressured economic environment and a widening gap between sell-in and sell-through,” Bjorhovde said.