Xiaomi, Foxconn to take India telecom manufacturing to new high

NEW DELHI: Chinese handset maker Xiaomi and Taiwanese company Foxconn have given the much-needed impetus to the government's 'Make in India's program and with these two big ticket investments, one thing seems to be clear that India's telecom is in the process of becoming self-reliant.

Although, India has witnessed tremendous growth in terms of telecom subscriber-addition in the past decade, but has recorded a bare minimal progress when it comes to manufacturing of telecom equipment. The primary reason, say the industry observers, is even though policy and framework was there but the decision-making was missing in the previous government, more so in the telecom industry that was marked by the 2G scam, where the whole governance machinery turned out to be tainted.

From the time telecom manufacturing started in India in the ‘80s, till date, the scenario has hardly changed. Even today 95 percent of telecom equipment is imported. According to research firm Frost & Sullivan, a handful of Indian companies manufacturing telecom gear add up to less than five percent of the total India market requirement.

But now industry observers are confident that the setting up of handsets manufacturing plants will set up the whole ecosystem for telecom manufacturing. Earlier, companies into manufacturing complained of absence of ecosystem but now everything will gradually fall in place, they believe.

Xiaomi yesterday launched its Redmi 2 Prime, its first to be assembled phone in India, which is already available on e-commerce sites Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon.

It also announced its partnership with Foxconn, the makers of Apple i-phone, which has assembled Redmi 2 Prime and will make Xiaomi's smartphones in India going forward.

"When we started out in July last year, we wanted to become part of the fabric of India," said Hugo Barra, Vice-President of Xiaomi Global. "We will make large quantities of Redmi 2 Prime. Overtime, all of our phones that we sell in India will be made in India," he added.

The device is equipped with a 4.7-inch screen and 720 x 1280 HD resolution. It is embedded with a Snapdragon 410 SoC, a quad-core CPU and the Adreno 306 GPU. It has a 2GB of RAM inside along with 16GB of native storage, besides a 32GB capacity microSD. The rear-facing camera is 8MP while the front-facing camera has a 2MP camera. The phone is powered by a 2200mAh battery, and Android 4.4.4 is pre-installed with MIUI 6 running on top.

Meanwhile, Foxconn has entered into a pact with the Maharashtra government to invest $5 billion over the five years on a new electronic manufacturing facility.

Foxconn has indicated that it is looking for local partners for the planned facility.