MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said 42 executives and senior engineers from Indian handset vendors, including Micromax Informatics Ltd, completed a training program launched by MediaTek, in an effort by the Taiwanese chip designer to improve its presence in the Indian market.
The program, jointly supported by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, aims to help India solve the problem of talent shortage amid rapidly growing demand for handsets in the populous nation, according to a joint statement released yesterday.
The program will help MediaTek, the nation’s biggest mobile phone chip designer, and its supply chain partners gain the upper hand in India’s handset market, it said.
“MediaTek is committed to assist Indian personnel develop their software capabilities. We will closely work with India to build an extensive handset manufacturing ecosystem in the nation in collaboration with our handset supply chain partners,” company chairman Tsai Ming-kai (蔡明介) said in a joint statement yesterday. “We are looking forward to seeing new handsets designed and made by India available on the market in the near future.”
MediaTek, which commands about a 30 to 40 percent share of India’s mobile phone chip market, counts Micromax, India’s No. 3 smartphone brand, as one of its clients there.
India aims to produce 500 million handsets in 2020 and grow the number to 1.2 billion in 2025, Indian Cellular Association founder and national president Pankaj Mohindroo said in the statement.
The training program sets the scene for India to design and manufacture mobile phones by itself, Mohindroo said.
Taiwanese companies have invested more than US$6 billion over the past several years to support India’s “Make in India” project, making Taiwan a reliable partner of that nation, Industrial Development Bureau Director-General Wu Ming-ji (吳明機) said in the statement.
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