Panasonic sees 'full-fledged' phone manufacturing in 1-2 years

NEW DELHI: Panasonic India is looking to "fully" manufacture mobile phones in India in next two years, while it banks on robust sales to clock revenues far higher than previously targeted.

Panasonic assembles mobile phones at its Noida unit, at 'semi-knocked down' level and is looking to deepen the manufacturing capability to 'completely-knocked down' level in the next 1-2 years, a senior company official said.

Government incentives and policies such as Make in India are changing the manufacturing strategy of players, Pankaj Rana, Business Head - Mobility Division, Panasonic India told PTI.

Recently, Panasonic has also doubled manufacturing capacity at its Noida unit to 8,00,000 units per month to meet the growing requirements of both India and overseas markets.

The company hopes to exceed the annual revenue target for mobility business and clock about Rs 3000 crore this fiscal.

"Our revenue target has been Rs 2,500 crore for 2016-17 and we expected to sell three million units, initially. But we hope to exceed that target and sell four million units this year. The revenue should be about Rs 3,000 crore, instead," he said.

Last fiscal, the company clocked Rs 1,200 crore revenue from mobility business and in unit terms, the phone sales stood at 1.5 million, he pointed out.

India is the headquarters for Panasonic's mobility business, operating as the hub for outside markets such as Nepal, Sri Lanka, the UAE and Oman among others. India accounts for as much as 90 per cent of the division's sales.

Panasonic today launched its new phablet - ELUGA NOTE that supports '4G VoLTE' for faster data access and better voice quality. The smartphone, priced at Rs 13,290, has an inbuilt IR sensor allowing users to give command to smart home appliances such as TV, DVD player and ACs.

"We are upbeat about the market. The economic growth is strong. We anticipate a surge in spending by government employees due to the pay hike," Rana said adding the company expected to increase market share to 6-7 per cent this fiscal against 3 per cent in the previous fiscal.