Three of China’s largest smartphone brands have opened discussions with Indian manufacturers about making phones locally for global export, a concrete step toward establishing the country as a hub for electronics production.
Xiaomi Corp (小米), Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀) and Vivo Communication Technology Co (維沃) are holding talks with Indian contract phonemakers, hoping to take advantage of cash incentives readily available to local firms, people familiar with the matter said.
If they go ahead, the plan is to get Lava International Ltd and Dixon Technologies India Ltd to assemble the phones and begin exporting from their plants as early as this year, they said, declining to be quoted on sensitive negotiations.
Photo: Dhiraj Singh, Bloomberg
Such a collaboration would be a milestone for an industry increasingly dominated by Chinese brands.
China is the world’s largest consumer and producer of smartphones, but Xiaomi and its peers are looking to expand globally as their home market plateaus.
Oppo and Vivo have begun discussions with Lava, while Xiaomi is courting Dixon, the people said.
Both groups are eyeing Indian government cash incentives linked to production capacity, a program intended to make India more competitive as an electronics maker.
Chinese executives are expected to begin visiting Lava and Dixon factories as soon as COVID-19 travel restrictions are lifted, one of the people said.
The Indian government has long pressed overseas brands to boost exports in return for access to India, the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market.
More broadly, manufacturers globally are exploring ways to reduce their reliance on a China-centric supply chain following a trade dispute with the US and shipping constraints amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
India, along with Southeast Asia, is emerging as an alternative.
“India is making the most of the technology cold war between the US and China, and now China and Taiwan, to strategically increase electronics manufacturing,” said Priya Joseph, a policy analyst at researcher Counterpoint. “After getting phonemakers to make in India for the domestic market, the government is preparing the ground for the next level of battle in phone exports.”
India’s mobile exports have skyrocketed since New Delhi introduced the Production-Linked Incentive program in 2020.
Mobile exports are expected to surpass 450 billion rupees (US$5.9 billion) in the year ending this month, a 30-fold jump in five years, the India Cellular & Electronics Association said.
“We foresee another 10-fold growth by 2026 riding on the key pillars of Apple [Inc] and Samsung [Electronics Co]’s global value chain ecosystem, as well as large domestic companies such as Lava,” association chairman Pankaj Mohindroo said. “India will hit about [US]$60 billion in exports by 2026.”
Several major names have signed up for the government incentives program since it was unveiled in the middle of 2020, envisioned at the time as helping create US$150 billion in mobile phone production over five to six years.
Apple’s primary suppliers, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), Wistron Corp (緯創) and Pegatron Corp (和碩), were among the first to commit, alongside Lava and Dixon.
Since then, the government has extended similar incentive plans to electronics from laptops to semiconductors.
Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo have begun shifting capacity to India. That has helped the country emerge as the second-largest manufacturer and assembler of mobile handsets by volume.
A couple of hundred factories now manufacture basic feature phones as well as smartphones, up from just two in 2014, said Amitabh Kant, chief executive officer of government think tank Niti Aayog.
Poland is betting on a flood of investments and technology transfers from Taiwanese companies to reengineer its US$1 trillion economy. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said yesterday that Poland will no longer be “just an assembly hub” as it pursues further investments from the likes of Foxconn Technology Group (富士康). The firm, whose full name is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), last month agreed to build electric vehicles (EVs) in the European Union nation and now could be a partner in a semiconductor venture, he said. The government’s aim is to boost manufacturing and the country’s high-tech chops in an era
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
BAD FAITH LITIGATION? The two companies, owned by a California-based private equity firm, could be seeking licensing fees or a settlement payout with the suit Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) Director-General Liao Cheng-wei (廖承威) said yesterday he suspected that two firms suing contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) for patent infringement are “patent trolls.” A patent troll refers to a company that buys patents not for manufacturing products, but to sue other companies for compensation, accusing them of using its patents. Patent trolls, formally called Non-Practicing Entities or Patent Assertion Entities, were responsible for more than 50 percent of lawsuits in the US last year, costing targeted businesses tens of billions of US dollars a year, according to the US-based LegalCharity Web site. Asked whether
RESTRICTION BREACH: ASML said that it denies ‘unfounded rumors regarding non-compliance with export controls concerning China,’ and enforces controls strictly US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick in a series of recent meetings outlined concerns to Dutch chip-equipment giant ASML Holding NV’s senior leaders that one of its top-of-the-line machines might have made its way into China, in violation of US-led export restrictions. In the meetings, Lutnick expressed concern to ASML executives over the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, people familiar with the talks said. EUV systems are used by firms such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) to manufacture processors for the likes of Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc. ASML has never been allowed to ship them to China because of curbs
RSS