The government plans to develop an Indian mobile brand in the coming years. The revelation came from the Union IT and Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw at the launch of PhonePe’s Indus App Store. According to the minister, the decision to develop an Indian smartphone brand stems from the success of large-scale mobile manufacturing under the Make in India initiative.
Currently, no Indian smartphone brand has a solid footing in the market, and it looks like the government intends to change this scenario. The Indian smartphone market is currently dominated by Chinese players, along with Samsung and Apple in the premium segment.
Indian Government to Create Smartphone Ecosystem in The Country
Vaishnaw said at the event that the success of local smartphone manufacturing has given a lot of confidence to the industry and has also been a good learning. It has motivated the ecosystem partners to enter the country and set up factories.
Notably, the government has already declared its intention to make India a semiconductor hub and offered $1 billion to each semiconductor company that starts manufacturing here. At the event, Vaishnaw also reiterated that PM Modi has already laid down a roadmap to develop the semiconductor ecosystem in India over the next 20 years.
The minister then announced that the Micron plant is already under construction, and the government will issue two or three more approvals to bolster the semiconductor ecosystem in the country further. According to the minister, the Indian government wants at least three to four high-volume fabrication plants to create a niche and take leadership in at least one product category over the next five years.
Considering that semiconductors are the core of smartphones and the most expensive part of a device, having a local ecosystem will help the government’s vision to build a handset ecosystem in the country. There have been several Indian brands, like Micromax and Lava, which have not been able to compete with other brands. This move will also help these local brands to gain a foothold in the Indian smartphone market.
Notably, the first step towards building a handset ecosystem in India has already been taken in the form of the Indus App Store. The Made-in-India app store has been designed to compete with Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.
