The good news is the shipments of made of India smartphones have grown year-on-year in Q2 2022. But it is a good news that has an asterisk to it. In that, the list is dominated by foreign brands. None of the home-grown brands seems to be in the top bracket.
For the record, Lava is the leading mobile phone player among the Indian brands in terms of shipments. It is the only company that is designing its products in India. Lava tops the Made in India shipments, with around 21% share in the feature phone segment.
According to Counterpoint Research, shipments of smartphones made in India increased by 16% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2022 to reach more than 44 million units. Oppo, with Realme and OnePlus also under its ambit, topped the list with a 24% share. Samsung was a close second, and Vivo third.
The reason attributed for the higher uptake of made in India phones is the companies are pushing for higher production to meet the criteria for production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme. The upcoming festive season will further drive the Made in India shipments, Counterpoint Research said.
Contract manufacturers do well
Breaking down the shipments, the research report said in-house manufacturing contributed to almost 66% of the total Made in India smartphone shipments, while the rest of the 34% shipments came from third-party EMS (Electronic Manufacturing Services) players.
Among the third-party EMS players, Bharat FIH, Dixon and DBG were the leading players during the quarter. Bharat FIH manufactures smartphones for Xiaomi, and Dixon Technologies does for Samsung. DBG also handles some manufacturing for Xiaomi.
Padget Electronics (396% YoY), Wistron (137% YoY) and Lava (110% YoY) were the fastest growing smartphone manufacturers during the quarter in terms of shipments.
In the wearable segment, TWS led in terms of domestic manufacturing with a 16% contribution, followed by neckbands and smartwatches.
PLI scheme effective in many sectors
The Counterpoint report further said that the Indian government’s push with multiple PLI schemes is paying dividends in product segments like smartwatch, TWS, neckband and tablet. Optiemus leads the Made in India shipments for smartwatches with more than 75% share. In TWS, Optiemus, Bharat FIH and Padget are the top three manufacturers. In the neckband category, VVDN and Mivi have a 90% share in the Made in India shipments. In the tablet category, Wingtech, Samsung and Dixon are the top players while in the TV category, Dixon, Radiant, Samsung and LG have a 50% share in the Made in India shipments.
In its vision document released earlier, the government considers consumer electronics segments like smartphones, laptops, tablets, TVs, TWS and electric components as among the most promising for India’s transformation as an electronics hub. To help drive more initiatives under the themes of Make in India and Digital India, the government, in its last budget, pushed the total allocation to $936.2 million.
In a major shot-in-the-arm for Indian government's make-in-India initiative, Google is considering moving some production of Pixel phones to India.
