Published : 10 Nov 2026, 10:52 PM
Updated : 10 Nov 2026, 10:52 PM
Bangladesh has held preliminary discussions with Apple about potential opportunities for the US technology giant to establish a manufacturing presence in the country, Prime Minister’s Advisor on Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Rehan Asif Asad has said.
Speaking at Grameenphone’s FutureMakers competition in Dhaka on Tuesday, Rehan said the talks explored how Bangladesh could support Apple’s future innovations and manufacturing plans.
He said Apple typically takes two to three years to assess a market before entering a country.
“We have had initial discussions about how Bangladesh could become part of that journey, support the company and potentially serve as a centre for its future innovations and manufacturing,” he said.
Rehan said the government aims to make Bangladesh a global hub for consumer electronics, semiconductors and device manufacturing within five years, drawing on the success of the garment industry.
He claimed that almost all high-end Android phones, including Samsung, Vivo and Honor models, were now being manufactured in Bangladesh.
The advisor said the government’s AI strategy focused on building infrastructure rather than developing its own AI models. This would include GPU capacity, memory, high-performance neural processing units and AI inference facilities.
He said the infrastructure would be made accessible to innovators, allowing them to develop services using public data on population, weather and agriculture without bearing the high costs of computing resources.
More than 7,000 students from over 70 universities submitted 1,103 ideas to this year’s FutureMakers competition, held under the theme “AI for Social Good”.
Team Lab-Dub won first place with EcoClip, an AI-powered device that converts a conventional stethoscope into a tool for detecting early signs of heart disease.
Team River Sentinel came second with an AI system to predict river erosion, while Team Jinxed secured third place with an AI-assisted speech therapy application.
