The government expects India to have a competitive homegrown mobile phone brand by the middle of next year, with three Indian players currently vying for the position, electronics and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at an event on Friday.
“We used to have a mobile manufacturing ecosystem, but tax issues and the Chinese onslaught made it impossible for Indian players to compete in the market. India’s smartphone market remains heavily dominated by foreign brands, particularly Chinese. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) notified the ₹ 62,500 crore Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme (MPMS), which provides fiscal and non-fiscal support for Indian brands, alongside incentives for large-scale mobile phone manufacturing, in the Gazette on Friday, after the Union Cabinet approved it on July 15. Four of the country’s top five smartphone brands by shipments in the April-June quarter were Chinese — vivo with a 17.8% share, OPPO with 13.6%, Xiaomi (including POCO) with 13.4% and realme with 10% — together accounting for roughly 55% of the market, according to Counterpoint Research. Samsung and Apple had a 17.6% and 7% share, respectively.
Now that we have rebuilt the ecosystem in the country, the time has come to refocus on building an Indian brand, with Indian IP and Indian design,” Vaishnaw said.
