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India’s smartphone market has seen some amazing development in the course of recent years. Coming next just to the world’s biggest market, China, there is as yet colossal potential in the consumer segment here.
Other than the retail market, the assembling business has likewise seen development. With the government’s push to “Make In India”, popular smartphone brands like Samsung, Xiaomi, and Apple have set up assembling plants in the country. Truth be told, the world’s biggest smartphone factory is also in India.
Eventually, the advantages of these large scale facilities go to the brands as well as to the Indian buyer as affordable products. Chinese smartphone giants like Vivo and Oppo have started to see the potential in these activities and have reserved large investments for such assembling units in India for the not so distant future.
Here’s a lowdown of all brands that are contributing to the “Make in India” initiative:
APPLE
Apple has two significant facilities in India. It uses contract producers Foxconn based in Chennai and Taiwanese partner, Wistron based in Bengaluru to make a portion of the smartphones it sells in India. Models, for example, iPhone XR, 7, (reportedly) SE 2020 are made in India, while the flagship iPhone 11 series just as iPhone XS and iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are imported. Actually, it sells smartphones worth $1.5 billion in India however just iPhones worth $500 million are made locally. The rest are imported models. Be that as it may, that may change soon.
It was reported in March this year that Apple isn’t eager to move smartphone production out of China to India on the grounds that the supply chain here isn’t sufficiently vigorous to make parts, for example, top of the line OLED panels. However, only two months after the fact, it was reported that the organization is presently considering moving production to India and make iPhones worth $40 billion in the local market. In fact, Apple is hoping to make India an export hub.
SAMSUNG
The Korean conglomerate is easily one of the biggest investors of the Make in India campaign. Samsung operates the world’s biggest smartphone manufacturing unit based out of Noida where it has the ability to make 120 million smartphones every year. It does not just sell the smartphones made at this plant in India but additionally sends out them to different nations. It makes a large portion of its smartphones in India, from the entry-level M series to the flagship Note series. However, a few models like the S20 series, Galaxy Fold, and Galaxy Z Flip are not made in India. Samsung makes these out of its plants in Vietnam and South Korea; it doesn’t have production plants in China any longer.
XIAOMI
Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer is another aggressive investor in the Make in India campaign. It claims, 99 percent of Xiaomi phones available to be purchased in India are made locally through contract producers like Foxconn and Flex. This applies to the Mi, Redmi, and POCO smartphones it sells here. The only Xiaomi smartphone that is made in China and imported to India is the Mi 10 – all other devices, from Redmi 8 series to the POCO X2, are made locally. Xiaomi makes 3 smartphones for every second in India, it said a year ago while introducing its seventh plant in the country.
OPPO
This BBK electronics backed brand has a production facility based out of Greater Noida. It spreads 110 acres of land and has employed over 10,000 as workforce across assembling, quality assurance, and product testing. The organization at present produces 4 million smartphones each month and it has plans to twofold that up before the end of 2020 to 8 million. The entire range of Oppo smartphones sold in India are made locally, even the new Find X2 is said to be made in India. It additionally makes smartphones for its sister brands OnePlus and Realme and runs a Research and Development (R&D) Center in Hyderabad to make India-centric features for its smartphones.
VIVO
Vivo is also backed by BBK electronics and has its facility based in Greater Noida where it produces 34.8 million smartphones in a year and all smartphones available in India for sale are made at this plant. It was reported that Vivo had plans of making India an export hub to supply smartphones to other nations and employ an additional 5000 people as part of the second phase of their expansion plan by the end of Q2 2020. However, the coronavirus pandemic could have halted this target now.
HUAWEI AND HONOR
Most of Huawei and Honor smartphones sold in India are made locally, as the organization claims. The organization has tapped contract producer Flex to make these smartphones at its Tamil Nadu office. However, it excludes their flagship device or the most recent Honor 9X Pro from this list. The organization additionally operates an R&D unit in Bengaluru that accommodates more than 5,000 engineers.
MOTOROLA
Motorola is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. However, is owned by China-based Lenovo. All smartphones sold in India are made locally at their contract producer’s Flex plant-based in Tamil Nadu except their flagship Motorola Edge +. Surprisingly, the Motorola razr 2019 is also made in India.
NOKIA
HMD Global licenses the Nokia brand to make and sell smartphones. The organization is situated in Finland, however, it is jointly owned by Taiwan-based Foxconn. Obviously, Foxconn makes Nokia phones in the Indian market. The organization makes the entirety of its smartphones with the exception of Nokia 9 PureView locally and plans to manufacture the majority of the parts used in its phones in India by 2022.
INFINIX, TECNO, AND ITEL
Infinix, Tecno, and Itel are registered in Hong Kong however their parent company Transsion Holdings is based out of China. Infinix says the entirety of its smartphones are made in India at its Noida-based plant and industry sources state 40-50 percent of the parts it uses are bought from local producers. However, we do not have any information about Tecno or its sub-brand Itel productions.
ASUS
The manufacturing unit of Asus is based out of Sri City, Andhra Pradesh where it makes smartphones for India. However, there is no clarity on which models are made at this facility but we do know its flagship gaming smartphone, ROG 2 is imported to India.
Now, that you’ve gone through the list of ‘made’ in India smartphones, it is important to understand the difference between manufacturing and assembling. All the above-listed organizations ASSEMBLE in India. Put in other words, the components to build a smartphone are imported from other countries and are simply put together in India.
Although “Boycott Chinese Products” is gaining resonance among the masses and trending on social media, it is practically not possible to do so at this time as the Indian smartphone market is dominated by China-based brands and these Chinese companies have sold at least 73% of the smartphone in the first quarter of 2020. One reason for this is India comes up short on the technology to create complex parts, for example, high-end chipsets and displays, and thus these are imported from China.
Also Read: One Name, Countless Achievements: 74 Gadgets that celebrate Independence with India
