Smartphone now India’s top export category: Vaishnaw
Smartphone has become India’s top export category with overseas shipments worth $30 billion in 2025, Union Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Wednesday. The minister shared the development in a social media post.“Becoming the smartphone manufacturing factory for the world,” Vaishnaw said.
The photo post titled Smartphones India’s No. 1 export category displayed that there were exports worth $30 billion in January-December 2025.Mobile phones worth INR5.5 lakh crore ($60 billion) were produced in the country, and exports from the segment were worth around INR2 lakh crore (about $22 billion) in 2024-25. Electronics exports from the country have crossed INR4 lakh crore ($44 billion) in 2025 and are expected to grow when four semiconductor plants begin production this year.
Neil Shah, Co-Founder and VP for Research at market research and analysis firm Counterpoint, said Apple has become a poster child for India by expanding its manufacturing post-US tariffs on China and with exports from India reaching a record high.“India will be touching almost 30 crore units of mobile phone production, and one in four smartphones produced in India are estimated to have been exported in 2025.
“High ASP (average selling price) or premium USA market is one of the largest export destinations driven by Apple, Samsung, and Motorola, also boosting the export value reaching highest ever,” Shah said. According to the International Data Corporation’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker for the third quarter of 2025, Apple clocked its highest-ever supplies of 50 lakh iPhones for the domestic market in a quarter.Apple leads both premium (smartphones priced in the range of INR53,000-71,000 apiece) and super-premium segment (priced above INR71,000 apiece), which drove the growth of the country’s smartphone market in the September quarter.
