Huawei ties up with Flextronics to make smartphones in India

New Delhi: Chinese smartphone maker Huawei said on Friday it will manufacture its smartphones in India through contract manufacturer Flextronics Technologies (India) Pvt. Ltd.

Flextronics will start by making 3 million smart phones, with Honor 5A being the first smartphone to be manufactured locally. The smartphones will be manufactured by Flextronics at its 645,000 square feet facility in Chennai and is expected to generate additional 1,500 jobs.

The unit is the 40th mobile manufacturing unit to come up in the last two years, said minister for information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad, who was part of the event in New Delhi.

Flextronics will also help Huawei with logistics and after sales service.

The plan feeds into government’s Make in India programme, which has especially focussed on encouraging electronics manufacturing in India. The announcement follows a series of steps taken by Huawei to boost its local operations.

Huawei in August launched its largest global service centre in India with an initial investment of Rs.136 crore.

The centre will house 1,000 personnel, supporting more than 30 countries in Asia, West Asia and Africa, and serving over 350 million subscribers. With the Chinese market reaching maturity, Chinese smartphone makers are looking at India as major market for future growth.

Huawei had the highest market share in terms of world wide smartphone sales in the second quarter of 2016 among Chinese smartphone makers, according to report by Gartner Inc released on 18 August .

The company sold 30.7 million smartphones, with a total market share of 8.9%, ahead of Oppo and Xiaomi. It was the third highest smartphone seller worldwide, behind Samsung and Apple Inc.

However, in the fast-growing India market, it continues to struggle to break into the top smartphone makers.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.