With 20 assembly lines and a planned employment of 50,000 people, Tata Group wants to build the largest iPhone assembly plant in India for Apple.

CTOnews.com, December 9, Tata Group plans to expand production capacity in India and is preparing to build a new iPhone assembly plant in order to better match Apple's strategic manufacturing expansion plan in India after its $125 million acquisition of Wistron's business.

Bloomberg reported that Tata Group is currently "recruiting" to accelerate the takeover of Wittronic and plans to build India's largest iPhone assembly plant in the town of Khosur, Tamil Nadu, India.

The new plant is expected to set up 20 assembly lines and plans to employ about 50000 workers over the next two years and is scheduled to be operational within 12 to 18 months.

One challenge for Tata, however, is that the Indian government-backed production-linked incentive (PLI) fiscal incentive will expire during its operation, so it is likely to seek new subsidies from the Indian government.

CTOnews.com has previously reported that Apple and its suppliers in India have set a new target of producing more than 5000 million iPhone phones a year in India over the next two to three years, with tens of millions more planned.

If this is achieved, India will account for 1/4 of global iPhone production and further expand its share by the end of the decade. At the same time, however, China will remain the world's largest producer of iPhone.