- It is presently working on “building capabilities” for smartphone manufacturing
- It is evaluating different options within India and looking at what it can do within India from a sourcing point of view, and this includes different stages in phone manufacturing
As per a report by the Economic Times, HMD Global, the maker of Nokia mobile handsets, said that it will make India as its prominent sourcing hub for global markets. It is presently working on “building capabilities” for smartphone manufacturing.
The report added that Sanmeet Singh Kochhar, vice president, HMD Global, told ET that the company sees India as an important market not only for sales, but also for sourcing. It is evaluating different options within India and looking at what it can do within India from a sourcing point of view, and this includes different stages in phone manufacturing.
He further added that the company wants to work with ecosystem partners in India to create a parallel ecosystem in terms of manufacturing and sourcing. He added that HMD is looking to work with various original device manufacturers and electronics manufacturing services (EMS) to build these capabilities for domestic and global supplies.
Work on their capabilities
The report said that he further added that the company has ODM partners who have already set up in India and is also working with Indian partners with whom he is trying to work on their capabilities and see what what can be done do along with them. Indian partners are different component manufacturers or even the EMS partners.
In October, the government cleared 10 companies to avail of benefits under the production-linked incentive or PLI scheme . These include five foreign firms including two units of Foxconn, Wistron, Pegatron and Samsung and Indian companies Lava, Micromax, Karbonn, Dixon and Optiemus.
“customised” devices for the Indian market
As per the report, he added that HMD Global is making more efforts to bring “customised” devices for the Indian market with the help of its investment in research and development. He stated that India is one of the top priority markets in multiple ways for the company. It’s Nokia C3 earlier this year was designed specifically for India and was targeted at the feature phone upgraders In India. It will continue to work on that front.
It had recently raised $250 million from investors like Nokia Technologies, Google, and Qualcomm. The report added that Kochhar said that the local ecosystem will allow HMD to get benefits in terms of component costs and duties. It will also help us build the scale in India not only in terms of costs, but also in terms of reliability of supplies.
