Apple Inc assembly partner Pegatron Corp (和碩) is making preparations for its first plant in India, adding to a large influx of foreign tech investments in the country this year.
Last month, the Indian government set out a US$6.6 billion plan to woo the world’s top smartphone manufacturers, offering financial incentives and ready-to-use manufacturing clusters.
Pegatron is now setting up a local subsidiary and joining fellow Taiwanese electronics assemblers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Wistron Corp (緯創), who have already been making some iPhone handsets in southern India.
With a number of factories in China, Pegatron is the second-largest iPhone assembler and depends on Apple for more than half of its business. Like its peers, it would set up in the south of India, said a person familiar with its plans who asked not to be named.
Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), and Wistron are looking to expand their operations in the country, and Pegatron’s entry could be seen as a defensive move to protect its share of budget iPhone manufacturing, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Matthew Kanterman said.
Pegatron could uphold its iPhone SE assembly market share, which might have grown from a 50-50 split with Hon Hai, Kanterman said.
India offers a vast pool of skilled labor as well as a domestic market of a billion mobile connections. Only about half of those are smartphones, leaving untapped potential that is attractive to growth-hungry global brands like Apple, Samsung Electronics Co, Xiaomi Corp (小米) and Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀).
For assemblers like Pegatron, exports would also be an enticing opportunity, especially at a time of worsening trade relations between Washington and Beijing making it imperative to have a diverse geographic base.
Smartphones are a focal point for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much-touted Make in India program. Indian Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad has said the goal is for brands and manufacturers to transport the entire supply chain to the country, not just the end-stage assembly.
Quoted by local media, Prasad said India wants not only the “bridegroom” but also the “wedding procession.”
India would become a global manufacturing hub for both components and the complete assembly of smartphones and other devices, said Pankaj Mohindroo, chairman of the Indian Cellular & Electronics Association.
The group’s three dozen members include Apple, Hon Hai, Google, Wistron, Oppo and others.
“The focus is shifting from making for India to exports and the $400 billion electronics manufacturing that India is targeting by 2025 will be dominated by exports,” Mohindroo said by telephone from New Delhi.
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said second-quarter revenue is expected to surpass the first quarter, which rose 30 percent year-on-year to NT$118.92 billion (US$3.71 billion). Revenue this quarter is likely to grow, as US clients have front-loaded orders ahead of US President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on Taiwanese goods, Delta chairman Ping Cheng (鄭平) said at an earnings conference in Taipei, referring to the 90-day pause in tariff implementation Trump announced on April 9. While situations in the third and fourth quarters remain unclear, “We will not halt our long-term deployments and do not plan to
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
RSS