Apple's center of gravity is China, not Cupertino

Apple will remain hugely reliant on China for manufacturing the iPhone, analysts told Insider.

• Apple might be headquartered in Cupertino but its heart is in China.
• Its devices are still manufactured there, and Greater China accounts for growing sales.
• Apple has already made concessions to the CCP.

Apple's leadership may operate from the 175-acre, tree-covered campus in sunny Cupertino, California but, in reality, the company's center of gravity is in China.

That's looking like an urgent problem, given geopolitical tensions are growing between the US and China and Apple remains the world's most valuable tech company.

Since 2001, China has become the single-most important place for Apple to build its devices, from iPods in the 2000s to iPhones today.

Roughly 95% of Apple products including iPhones, AirPods, Macs and iPads are reported to be made in China. While Apple is moving some manufacturing to India, experts think progress will be slow.

Taiwan-based Isaiah Research, a supply-chain consultancy, estimated to Insider that the tech giant will still be producing up to 83% of iPhones in China, and just 23% or less in India.

As yet, no Asian country can match China's prowess in manufacturing.

There are other dependencies.

Taiwan-based Foxconn, arguably Apple's most important contractor, is the largest private employer in China. Apple has around 1 million employees, and supports around another 4 million jobs through its manufacturing and tech ecosystems, according to the company's Chinese website. And more recently, Apple has entrusted the assembly of its upcoming Vision Pro mixed-reality goggles to a Chinese contract manufacturer.

All of this is immensely awkward for Apple. Its hardware dependence on China weakens its defenses against, say, the whims of Beijing's censorship of software, an under-considered geopolitical battleground.

Despite its initial protests, Apple now enforcing new rules in China that mean new apps must be licensed by the government before they can launch on the China App Store. In other words, the Chinese government has direct refusal power to allow Apple apps, though it isn't clear yet whether any apps have been affected. (Google's Play Store isn't available in China.) Equivalent power for the US government seems unthinkable.

"The real impact of this approval process is it underscores the increasing tensions between China and the West," Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management and a longtime Apple watcher, wrote on X.

Jay Newman, a former hedge fund manager at Elliott Management, has previously commented how "even small shifts risk retaliation by Chinese overlords who might retaliate by turning Chinese consumers against Apple products."

It's already happening.

Though Apple's new iPhone 15 has been flying off the shelves in China, the Mate 60 Pro — a new 5G smartphone released in August by Chinese tech giant Huawei — has been championed as a symbol of China's growing independence from the West. And multiple media outlets reported that China had banned iPhones for government staffers, knocking its share price.

Apple CEO Tim Cook likes to present the company's decades-long involvement with China as a cause for celebration.

At the high-profile China Development Forum in Beijing in March, he said: "This has been a symbiotic kind of relationship."

It's not clear China sees it that way.