Is India The New Mobile Manufacturing Hub?

Established international players along with new domestic & overseas mobile phone manufacturers have set up shop in various parts of the country. And they’re here to stay.

- Roy Varghese

MOBILE PRODUCTION in India has already crossed the 100-million-units mark, and is set to touch 500 million in the next two years. Thanks to the ‘Make in India’ initiative propelled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we produced 11 crore mobile phones worth Rs 54,000 crore in FY15-16, up 186 percent from 6 crore in the previous year. Five crore feature phones worth Rs 49,000 crore and 6 crore smartphones worth Rs 5,000 crore were manufactured during the year compared to 1.7 crore feature phones (worth Rs 1,400 crore) and 4.3 crore smart phones (worth Rs 17,500) in FY14-15.

According to minister for electronics and information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad, India has attracted investment from 37 mobile manufacturing companies in the last one year. Many foreign as well as domestic players are building new capacities in India.

For instance, Chinese companies such as Gionee and Xiaomi are making their handsets at Foxconn plant in Andhra Pradesh, while Apple India is all set to start its Bengaluru manufacturing unit Peenya, but a official word on the launch is still pending. According to sources, Apple is in talks with the Indian government to provide it with some tax relief for manufacturing in the country. But apparently, the government hasn’t yet agreed to give any concession in terms of duties and tax benefits to the international brand.