HMD Global will manufacture Nokia phones in India by 2022
NEW DELHI: HMD Global, the exclusive licensee of the Nokia brand for phones and tablets, which imports mobile phone components and assembles them in India, will progressively switch to manufacturing all components in India by 2022, a top executive said.
“Until this year, we imported all our components and assembled them here. Now we will be manufacturing some of the components in India as well... next year more, and the year after that even more. It’s going to be a phased manner in which we start switching to component manufacturing also,” Ajey Mehta, vice-president India, HMD Global, said.
With an aim to boost local manufacturing, the Union government on April 2 imposed a 10% basic customs duty on import of smartphone components such as camera modules and printed circuit board (PCB) assembly. Prior to this, there was no import duty on these components. Moreover, in the budget for 2018-19, the Centre had increased customs duty on mobile phones to 20% from 15%. The measures are in line with the government’s Phased Manufacturing Programme, which aims to boost local manufacturing of phones. In its first phase, in 2017-18, the government had tar- geted production of various components for three years— mechanics, die-cut parts, microphones and receivers, keypads and USB cables; printed circuit boards, camera modules and connectors in 2018-19; and display assemblies, touch panels, vibrator motors and ringers in 2019-20.
“For example, PCBs will attract a duty from this year, so we are ramping up our manufacturing to make sure we manufacture the PCBs in the country. We are doing it (manufacturing) with Foxconn. Similarly, the other parts of the phone over a period of time,” Mehta said, adding that he expects that by 2022, “a few things will continue to be imported, but almost the entire component ecosystem will start to set up in India”.
For this, the company is also in talks with the government for the latter’s support for the mobile components ecosystem.