'Telecom manufacturing to see big upshot by 2020'

NEW DELHI: India will have almost 1,500 factories making handsets and associated ecosystem products by 2020, a local industry association said, a view endorsed by companies such as Foxconn, which said the opportunity was big enough to make 1 billion devices provided there is policy stability.

“Right now, we have 104 factories... by 2020, we expect that 1,450-1,500 plants will come up through the phased manufacturing programme (PMP),” said Pankaj Mohindroo, president of the Indian Cellular Association.

The question is not whether the next 1 billion phones can be produced in India in 10 years but whether it can be done in five, according to Josh Foulger, head of India operations at Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer.

“India has all the potential to do it. We have 100 companies here, PMP is in motion and the component ecosystem has slowly started to take shape. The key enablers are that the government continues to maintain the even queue, the policy stability has been very good so far. Continuity of PMP is dependent on policy stability,” Foulger said.

Chinese semiconductor company Spreadtrum and Indian handset vendor Lava are optimistic on the India opportunity. The Chinese chipset maker expects the feature phone market to remain the dominant segment since 60-70% of India’s mobile phone users haven’t upgraded to smartphones.

The company is investing in the 4G LTE feature phone segment, which according to Neeraj Sharma, head of Spreadtrum in India, will give users incentive to move to smartphones.

“LTE feature phones will be there for one to two years. The total market is 100 million, after which people will want to move to smartphones,” Sharma said.