Made in India Mobiles

Hi Friends,

Recently one of my friends asked me a patriotic question – following the call of “Atmanirbhar Bharat” of our honourable PM Narendrabhai, he wanted to buy a mobile phone which is not Chinese and purely made in India and asked me which options he had available to him. That conversation has inspired me to write this article.

Let us understand that India as a country is lagging far behind in electronic manufacturing, whether it is consumer electronics, industrial electronics or Information and Communication technology. There are no indigenously manufactured electronic items in India, thanks to Chinese invasion in this field. Of course, the government is aware of this very precisely and is trying very hard to promote and initiate local manufacturing of Electronic Goods in our country. There are lots of incentives being offered by GOI and I am hopeful that down the line in five years, we will have locally developed mobile phones to use. Meanwhile, let me give you an overview of the products that are already available to us.

Mainly there are two categories:

1. Chinese Smartphone Companies in India:

• • • Xiaomi Largest Chinese Mobile Brand in India
    • Oppo, Realme and Oneplus – all are Chinese brands
    • Vivo, iQOO are other major Chinese brands in India.
    • Huawei is also from China.

2. Non-Chinese Mobile Companies in India

• • • Samsung is from South Korea
    • Apple is from the US
    • Google is from the US
    • Sony is from Japan
    • HTC and Asus are from Taiwan
    • Nokia was earlier a Finnish mobile brand but now it is bought by HMD global (another Finnish company). However, the manufacturing of Nokia phones is done by Foxconn – a Taiwanese company.
    • Foxconn makes mobiles for many companies like Apple, Nokia, Xiaomi, and has manufacturing plants in China, India, Brazil, and other countries.

However, let me clarify that some of the Chinese companies like Xiaomi and Vivo have assembly plants in India to make phones. These factories employ thousands of Indians to assemble phones. Few companies like Micromax, Lava and others have started importing mobile CKD kits and started assembling the same in India, but the cut-throat Chinese competition has taken its toll.

So, the answer to the query is Xiaomi, Asus, Vivo, Oneplus, Samsung – these are your choice of phones in case you want to go for economy models. Apple, Google and higher-end models of Samsung are choices for high end, high-cost products.

The bottom line here is that there is no mobile phone available today that is 100% indigenously manufactured in India. Perhaps waiting for another 3-5 years would be worth it, following the call of “Atmanirbhar Bharat”?