What smartphone parts are manufactured in India?

In the modern day smartphones Important things are:

1. Display
2. Processor
3. Battery
4. Camera

Out of all, none of them are manufactured in India. There are several reasons behind that.

But we have been hearing a lot about ‘Make in India’ since 2014 then why aren’t these made in India, right?

The truth is — it’s ‘Assembled in India’, we see ‘Made in India’ on the smartphone box but in reality they are just assembled here by importing the parts.

But before that, let’s look at the components manufactured in India:

1. PCBs — PCBs for the smartphones are made locally. Samsung is manufacturing PCBs from late 2007 but others OEMs are manufacturing these from last 5 or 6 years.
2. Chargers — Chargers are manufactured locally for the smartphones sold here but contrary to other equipment these are shipped outside India as well. Estimates are that we may produce 50% of the smartphone chargers globally in next 2–3 years.
3. Power banks — These little but heavy power houses are made here in large quantity.

There are exceptions for everything and for this one too. Not only these components but some other components are also made in India but in less quantity. Xiaomi has 7 manufacturing plants in India till now.

In those plants they assemble smartphone parts but they manufacture Displays, fingerprint sensors and camera modules too but in less quantity. Samsung do manufacture some parts here but we have no idea what they are.

Reasons why we don’t manufacture other parts are:

1. Fabrication units — Manufacturing processors or chipsets requires dedicated environment which are not built in India till now because they are too costly to maintain.
2. Lack of resources like (continuous) Water and electricity supply.
3. Skilled manpower and some others.

Note: The information that I’ve provided above is subjective i.e. it might change in the future. What if I say “It will definitely change in the future?” Yes.

After seeing the investments and interests from foreign brands I think India is going to become a manufacturing hub in Electronics in the near future.