American Cell Phone Manufacturers

Apple designs the iPhone, including the current iPhone 18 Pro, the foldable iPhone Duo, iPhone Air and iPhone 17, and writes its iOS software in the United States. Apple also designs the chips at the heart of the phone: the A-series processors, its own C1 cellular modem and the N1 wireless chip for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Thread, which replaced parts once bought from Qualcomm and Broadcom. Apple spent $34.6 billion on research and development in fiscal 2025 and says its US-based advanced R&D spending nearly doubled over five years. In 2025 it pledged to hire about 20,000 more US workers, mostly in R&D, silicon engineering, software and AI.

iPhone engineering is centered at Apple Park in Cupertino, California. Apple is also expanding its Austin, Texas campus, which has more than 13,000 Apple employees statewide and a new R&D lab for hardware engineering, hardware technology and software. Apple says nearly 100 components in the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo come from American companies in more than a dozen states, through its American Manufacturing Program, part of a $600 billion US commitment.

Engineered in: Cupertino, CA and Austin, TX (product design, iOS, and A-series, modem and wireless chip design).

US-made parts: cover glass and Ceramic Shield from Corning (Harrodsburg, KY; all iPhone cover glass worldwide by the end of 2026); Face ID lasers from Coherent (Sherman, TX); radio components from Broadcom (Fort Collins, CO); camera aperture films from Qnity (Delaware); titanium for iPhone Duo from Perryman (Houston, PA); and Apple chips from TSMC Arizona (more than 100 million in 2026).

Assembled in: China (about three-quarters of iPhones in 2025) and India (about a quarter).

Source: Apple Newsroom, 2026 · Apple Newsroom, 2025 · Apple 10-K, 2025 · Bloomberg, 2026, checked 10/2026

Google designs its Pixel phones, now led by the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro Fold, along with the Android operating system and the Gemini AI and camera software that most of the phone's features run on. Since Tensor G5, Pixel phones have used Google's own fully custom Tensor processor, including Google-designed image and AI processors. Pixel hardware sits in Google's Platforms & Devices division, which combined the Android and hardware teams in 2024. Alphabet spent $61.1 billion on research and development in 2025.

Pixel, Android and Google's AI work are based at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. Google also runs a large hardware engineering hub in Taiwan, which it calls its largest outside the US, with labs for Pixel, Fitbit and Nest. Tensor chips are made by TSMC.

Engineered in: Mountain View, CA (product design, Android, AI and camera software), with hardware engineering also done in Taiwan.

Imported: Tensor chips (made by TSMC).

Assembled in: China, Vietnam and India by contract manufacturers. Google has reportedly told suppliers all Pixel phones will be made outside China starting in 2027.

Source: Alphabet 10-K, 2026 · 9to5Google, 2025 · 9to5Google, 2024 · Business Today, 2026, checked 10/2026

Motorola designs smartphones including the Razr Fold and the Razr, Razr+ and Razr Ultra flip phones, the Motorola Edge, and the moto g Stylus and moto g Power. It also makes ThinkPhone and ThinkShield models for business. Motorola invented the handheld cell phone and has made phones since the 1980s. Lenovo has owned it since 2014, and its phones are designed and built by Motorola Mobility, a Lenovo subsidiary.

Motorola's headquarters and US engineering are at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. Lenovo job postings from 2026 list Chicago engineering teams working on phone hardware, such as baseband circuit design, power management and thermal design for new form factors, plus software for AI wearables. Lenovo also runs mobile R&D and production in Wuhan, China.

Engineered in: Chicago, IL (headquarters, phone hardware and software engineering), along with Lenovo engineering centers in China.

Assembled in: China, Brazil and India.

Source: Motorola about, 2026 · Lenovo careers, 2026 · Xataka, 2023, checked 10/2026

The Liberty Phone is Purism's privacy-focused Linux smartphone. It runs PureOS rather than Android or iOS, has hardware kill switches that physically cut off the camera, microphone and radios, and uses a modem on its own replaceable card. It has a 5.7-inch 720×1440 display, 4 GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage and a 4,500 mAh battery the owner can replace. It is built for buyers, businesses and government agencies that need to know where a phone's parts come from and who touched them. It runs the same software as Purism's lower-priced Librem 5, which is made in China.

Purism says all the electronics in the Liberty Phone are made at its US facility and the whole phone is assembled in the USA. In Carlsbad, staff mount the chips, capacitors and resistors on bare boards on Purism's own surface-mount line, then inspect the boards, load the firmware, fit them into the chassis, install the software and ship the phones straight to customers. Purism uses US-made chips where it can, including parts from Texas Instruments and STMicro's US plants. The NXP processor comes from South Korea. The phone lists at $1,999.

Made in: Carlsbad, CA (mainboard and USB-C circuit boards built, then assembled, loaded with firmware, tested and packaged).

Imported: chassis (China); M.2 cellular modem (China, with US or EU modems on request); Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module (India); NXP processor (South Korea) and some other chips; timing crystal (China).

Source: Purism Liberty Phone, 2026 · 404 Media, 2025, checked 10/2026