India is not exactly famous for its manufacturing capabilities but that is going to change very soon- at least in the mobile phone set. India is now the 4th largest market for mobile phone and after 2 years it is going to overtake both USA and Russia to become the second largest market only after China. China has already shown remarkable success in producing mobile phone sets. However, depending on one country too much for any kind of production can become quite risky for the multinational telecom companies. That is why perhaps they are now thinking of turning India into a mobile phone production hub.
Nearly 2 months ago, I wrote about Samsung's export of "Made in India" mobile phone sets to Dubai. Now, Nokia and LG both are trying this matter very seriously and according to this report of Reuters:
"Two of Nokia's suppliers -- Aspocomp group and Perlos Corp. -- are investing $70 million and $12 million respectively to set up a printed circuit board unit and a mechanics factory.
South Korean conglomerate LG Electronics Inc., for its part, operates a plant in Pune that will churn out 20 million GSM and CDMA handsets by 2010, roughly half of which are earmarked for export.
"We are already exporting in excess of 10,000 units a month and we can see it growing to 50,000 a month in less than a year," said H.S. Bhatia, product group head for GSM phones at LG.
"India is also emerging as a second base apart from China, to distribute risk. Handset firms, having already established their initial manufacturing bases in China, are now looking at other locations, for which India is the obvious choice due to its growing domestic base."
Fourth-ranked LG exports handsets made in India to Bangladesh, the Middle East, Nepal, Africa and Sri Lanka. LG's larger rival Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has also begun producing handsets in the country."
I know Indian government will be very happy to read this news. However, I just hope that Indian bureaucracy provides all out support to the foreign companies.
What is your idea about this matter? Do you think that Indian can show the same kind of success in producing mobile phone like China?
well I think they can overlapped China in quality of the phone. Because India is better in technology, yes China can make cheaper phone, but like others China's goods, the quality isnt good.
Posted by: hedgehogman | May 26, 2006 10:02 PM | Permalink to Comment