Delhi’s friendly neighbourhood Noida is now India’s hub for mobile production
Aug 26, 2016, 12:48 IST
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Most of the Samsung smartphones that Indians have in their hands today, along with the ones from home-grown brand like Karbonn, Lava or Intex, are being 'Made in India,' with high chances that they were assembled in the Noida-Greater Noida region, the Uttar Pradesh industrial city neighbouring Delhi.Last year’s budget announced a 10.5% duty differential between imported devices and the ones made in India, after which Noida became the country’s biggest smartphone hub, being able to make more than 140 million devices per year, a whopping 40% more than what’s needed in a year.
Even though all the critical components of a smartphone, processors for example, still come from China and Taiwan , Noida still remains a key part for the industry, with the local industry giving about 5-8% of value addition at present, which can be taken up to around 35% in coming five years.
It all started with Samsung starting local manufacturing a decade ago, seeding a significant number of smartphone component suppliers from Noida.
"All our mobile phones, from feature phones to the Galaxy S7 that we sell in India, are manufactured at our Noida factory, and we will continue to explore future investment opportunities," a spokesperson for Samsung told TNN.
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Now, Noida is home to the units of several Indian brands like Lava, Intex and Karbonn, along with Taiwanese contract manufacturer Wistron, which is making phones for LG, OnePlus, Oppo and HTC in partnership with home-grown telecom retailer and manufacturer Optiemus. Each factory set up in the city creates 3,000-4,000 direct jobs for mostly high-school or ITI graduates.
Even though UP is not generally regarded as the best place to do business, the fact that Noida shares borders with Delhi has helped it bloom.
Now that there are efforts being made to develop R&D and design capabilities in India so that the reliance on partners in China and Taiwan can be lessened, Noida is all set to grow even further.
"Electronics manufacturing is a focus of the government as part of the 'Make in India' initiative. The current investments have resulted in as many as 40,000 direct jobs and over 1.2 lakh indirect employment. We estimate that mobile phone production will reach a level of around 500 million devices by 2019-20," said IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
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