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.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported record revenue of NT$416.975 billion (US$13.17 billion) for last month, putting the world’s largest contract chipmaker on track to set a record for quarterly revenue. Last month’s figure surpassed March’s record NT$415.19 billion and represented increases of 1.5 percent from April and 30.1 percent from a year earlier. For the first five months of the year, TSMC generated NT$1.96 trillion in revenue, up 30 percent year-on-year, it said in a statement. TSMC has forecast second-quarter revenue of between US$39 billion and US$40.2 billion, representing sequential growth of about 10 percent and year-on-year growth of about
Infineon Technologies AG is preparing to open its largest single investment, a 5 billion euro (US$5.8 billion) semiconductor factory built with the help of EU subsidies, as the bloc seeks to boost chip production. The power chip fab, which is an extension of the German company’s Dresden campus, is scheduled to open on July 2, Infineon chief operating officer Alexander Gorski said this week at the site. The project is a major recipient of EU Chips Act funds, receiving about 1 billion euros in subsidies. The new plant represents a rare success for the bloc’s flagship semiconductor law, which was drawn up during
PATENT PROBE: US lawmakers called for a ban on imports of chips made by TSMC if they are found to infringe on US patents, with a preliminary ruling expected soon Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) yesterday expressed confidence in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) compliance with patent regulations after reports linked the company to a patent infringement lawsuit in the US. US Representative Ryan Zinke, and US senators Tim Sheehy, Roger Marshall and Bernie Moreno urged the US International Trade Commission in a May 22 letter to ban imports of chips made by TSMC if they are found to infringe on US patents, Axios reported on Wednesday. An administrative law judge is expected to issue a preliminary ruling this month, with the commission potentially making a final decision in
Taiwan remained the sixth-largest net creditor nation in the world last year, despite a fall of more than 10 percent in its net international investment position (NIIP) over the year, the central bank said yesterday. The NIIP is the difference between a country’s external financial assets and its external financial liabilities. Taiwan’s external financial assets hit US$3.27 trillion at the end of last year, up US$275.75 billion or 9.2 percent from a year earlier, the central bank said in its annual NIIP report. The growth largely reflected an increase in holdings of overseas marketable securities by residents in Taiwan, as well as a
RSS