Seeing the huge consumption rate of mobile handsets in India, it is estimated that soon the country will witness a footfall of about 1500 new mobile plants and ecosystem factories by 2020.
“Currently there are 104 mobile phones and component factories in country. But soon under phased manufacturing programme we are expecting about 1500 new mobile plants by 2020” said Pankaj Mahendroo, president of India Cellular Association at three day mega event of India Mobile Congress 2017.
During a conference session on ‘India- The next global destination for mobile phones and component manufacturing’, chipset companies like Mediatek and Spreadtrum showed positive intention towards the local market. Neeraj Sharma, country head, Spreadtrum thinks that feature phone market will continue to dominate the handset scenario of India. “LTE feature phone will be there for 1-2 years, total market is 100 million, after which people will want to move to smartphones.” he added.
The event was also graced by some prominent mobile manufacturers like Lava and HMD Global who extended their complete support to the phased manufacturing programme announced by the government. On being asked about the challenges that manufacturing units face while settling in Indian ecosystem, Ajay Mehta, Vice President of HMD global highlighted “India is one of the fastest growing smartphone market in the world. From a smartphone perspective because the consumption rate is so high being able to react in good response time in terms of availability and supplies one of the biggest challenges that we face in this industry. Therefore, how to forecast the volume and how quickly we recover and fulfil the demand in market is something that constantly we are trying to sort out.”
-By Shruti Mishra
