Mobile phone production in India has grown from a pittance to $44 billion, with around $11 billion in handsets exported, according to electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
"Ten years ago, electronics manufacturing was a very small activity in our country. Today the magnitude of electronics manufacturing is worth 8.5 lakh crore in the country," Vaishnaw said, after a tour of the iPhone casings factory of Tata Electronics in Hosur. “We are going up in the value chain,” he said, adding that today there are multiple parts, components, and sub-assemblies that are manufactured in India.
In the past eight-and-a-half years, India has reached a level where it can lead in an exports-led role in the electronics industry, the minister said, as per economic times.
Ten years ago, 98% of mobile phones in India were imported; today, 99.2% of mobile phones are manufactured in India, according to Vaishnaw.
"That is the success of Make in India. There has also been superb progress in the semiconductor industry. On January 1, 2022, the India Semiconductor Mission was launched, and within a short time frame, the construction of our first plant manufacturing chips (by Micron Technology) was started," he said.
“It is going very well and very soon we should see more announcements in the semiconductor industry,” he said.
The mobile phone sector directly employs over 250,000 individuals.
On the recent Tata takeover of Taiwanese company Wistron’s iPhone assembly plant in Karnataka's Kolar district, the minister said, this is not assembly in the conventional sense. "This is precision in terms of microns not seen in large industries. There is a lot of interest from participants and establishments in electronics manufacturing in the country," he said.
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