Huawei begins making phones in India
Huawei Technologies Co will begin assembling phones in India with manufacturing partner
Flextronics International Ltd, establishing a beachhead in the world's fastest-growing
smartphone arena.
The Chinese company expects to have Flex put together its first gadgets starting October,
Jay Chen, the chief executive ofr Huawei's Indian business, told reporters at a news conference.
Huawei, the world's third largest smartphone maker, joins rivals from Samsung Electronics Co
and Apple Inc in targeting one of the few markets still rapidly expanding as global demand
stagnates. But intense competition between markert leader Samsung and Chinese names such as Xiaomi
Corp and Lenovo Group Ltd has begun to depress margins. Grabbing a solid share of India, however,
could further Huawei's stated ambition of displacing Apple and Samsung to become the world's top
maker of phones.
India, the world's second-largest smartphone market, is on the cusp of a phone manufacturing
boom spurred by the government's "Make in India" drive. Huawei joins a growing list of foreign
names, from Xiaomi to Lenovo, now getting their phones put together in the country. For now,
however, that mainly consists of assembling semi-knocked-down phone kits rather than the end-to-end
manufacturing that China's known for.
Chinese companies in particular have been keen to set up shops in India, as growth at home slows.
Before Huawei, LeEco was the most recent to get in on the act, contracting a facility to assemble
60,000 phones a month, rising eventually to 200,000.
more than two-thirds of the smartphones shipped in the first quarter of 2016 were assmbled in
India, said Jaipal Singh, a market analyst for client devices at researcher IDC.
Vendors who are currently assembling phones are likely to start manufacturing components like
batteries, chargers and data cables with tax incentives offered by the federal and regional
governments, IDC said in a report. Huawei has emerged in past years as China's leader in
high-end phones, eschewing the lower-end models that rivals like Oppo and Vivio favor. Founded in
1987 by former army engineer Ren Zhengfei, Huawei used its business of selling networking gear to
bankroll its intial fray into premium phones. It's among a crop of Chinese smartphone vendors
now steadily draining market share from Samsung and Apple globally.