India to manufacture 22.5 crore ‘Made In India’ mobile phones this year

After witnessing a massive growth in sales and production of ‘Made In India' mobile phones, the government is expecting the production level of mobile handsets will hit 22.5 crore mark this year. During the last fiscal, 17.5 crore of mobile handsets were manufactured in the country.

In the last few years, the country has attracted several foreign mobile manufacturing companies who are building new capacities in India.

Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that the government is committed for manufacturing India. The global companies have already opened their manufacturing units in India and hope more companies to come.

Recently, the government has even doubled the fund allocation to Rs 3,073 crore in 2018 budget to boost the ‘Digital India’ initiative.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook had earlier emphasised the importance of India to his company. The revenues of the company from India has doubled during the last September quarter.

According to the Registrar of Companies (Roc) filing, Apple India posted sales of Rs 11,619 crore ($1.8 billion) for the year ended March 2017, up from Rs 9,937 crore in the year-ago period (translating to 17% growth in a country).

Apple’s local assembler in India, Wistron is also planning to move beyond iPhone and set-up another smartphone manufacturing unit in Bengaluru.

Also Read: Made in India mobile phone sales touch over 74 per cent, imports go down

According to research firm Counterpoint, the biggest manufacturing units in India are mostly Chinese.

The report also suggested that the total import bill made by finished mobile phones in the country have been drastically down to $3.4 billion in 2017 and is likely to fall further to $2 billion in 2018.

The import of mobile phones like Google Pixel 2 or iPhone X has been continuously going down for the few past years. In 2014, the total import of these phones stood at 205 million. In 2017, however, the total number fell to 77 million; and is expected to fall even more to 31 million in 2018.

The development was first reported by The Hindu.