Chinese telecom giant Huawei on Friday announced it will start to manufacture smartphones in India. With this the company has joined compatriots like Xiaomi and lenovo to set up factories in the world’s fastest growing smartphone market.
The world’s third largest smartphone maker has joined hands with contract manufacturer Flextronics International to produce handsets at a facility in Chennai.
The facility will make three million units initially and provide 10,500 jobs, Huawei announced on Friday.
Targeting a 10 per cent share in Indian smartphone market, Huawei also plans to expand its Indian retail network by raising the number of outlets it partners to more than 50,000 by the end of the year.
While inaugurating the Chennai facility from here, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “The investment in electronics manufacturing, which was around Rs 11,000 crore, has risen to Rs 1.24 lakh crore.
It is a great sense of satisfaction, as indicated to me, this (Huawei) will be 40th manufacturing unit in the country.”
Huawei will start production of its Honor series phones at the plant from October 1.
Chinese telecom companies have been setting shops in India after a slump in growth at home market. Recently, leEco announced contract manufacturing facility with a capacity of 60,000 phones a month, rising eventually to 200,000.
“Today, we announce the start of manufacturing of our Honor phones in India with Flextronics. This underlines our long term commitment for India. Spectrum auction is coming and we will like to commit to Indian industry that we will make available all out latest technology product including 4G, 4G plus and 5G products,” Huawei India Chief Executive Officer Jay Chen said.
He said that Huawei is the third-largest smartphone maker after Apple and Samsung.
“We have partnered with Flextronics who work with us globally to make our Honor series smartphones in the country. Initially we have tied up for 3 million units and will scale up as per demand. This project will create 3,000 direct employment opportunity at Huawei and 6,000 indirect jobs,” P Sanjeev, Vice President -Sales (India Business Head for Huawei & honor Consumer Business).