Will the handset boom transform India into an electronics manufacturing powerhouse?

The Cupertino-headquartered Apple Inc and its global supply chain are set to transform India’s electronics manufacturing landscape. It is similar to what Maruti Suzuki did for automobiles in India by creating a new market. The launch of its first car triggered the development of an industrial ecosystem as suppliers followed, skills deepened, and scale was achieved.

Apple started assembling devices in India back in 2017, much before the government launched the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme to boost hi-tech manufacturing. The electronics PLI, started in 2020, acted as a catalyst. The Apple iPhone maker’s contract manufacturers—Foxconn, Pegatron, Tata Electronics—today churn out around 55 million iPhones in India, accounting for 14% of its global production here, Apple’s only production site outside China.

The scale of the change is striking. In 2025, Apple’s iPhone was the single most valuable export from India ($23 billion). In 2025, overall smartphone exports reached $30 billion compared to $24.14 billion in 2024, with iPhones accounting for 76% of the total.

Apple’s outgoing CEO Tim Cook was instrumental in scaling Apple’s operations in India and the country is expected to remain central to Apple’s future growth under CEO designate John Ternus, who takes over from Cook on September 1.

It is important to clarify that in India what we understand as manufacturing is still generally the assembly of components. But the difference here is that companies such as Foxconn deliver a ready-to-use final product because they control and integrate the whole supply chain and not just the last step of putting the parts together. Local value addition in electronics, for example, is 15-20%. China, the world’s electronics factory, is at 40%, a level India is targeting over the next few years.

To put the numbers in perspective, India’s smartphone exports were almost non-existent in 2014 when the Make in India initiative was launched. The government started collecting data for smartphones separately in 2022. Consequently, smartphones have vaulted from India’s 167th-ranked export item a decade ago to its single-largest export between 2015 and 2025. For comparison, smart TV and laptop manufacturing are less than $10 billion each in India.

The ecosystem build-up does change when a large brand enters a market, and that’s what we have seen when Apple came in.

-Sunil Raina,,MD, Lava International

“The ecosystem build up does change when a large brand enters a market, and that’s what we have seen when Apple came in,” says Sunil Raina, Managing Director Lava International. He explains that global companies are now realising the India advantage. “Low costs, skilled manpower and government push with the PLI scheme.” Lava International is a Noida-based home grown brand which makes both feature phones and smartphones.

Jobs Boom

Apple is the defining product on this growth trajectory. Though, much like any new beginning, Apple’s initial effort was modest, limited largely to the production of older models and serving the domestic market.

The global supply chain disruptions during the Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions pushed multinational companies to look at ways to reduce their dependence on China. Apple’s China-plus-one strategy found fertile ground in India just as incentives were being rolled out to encourage large-scale electronics manufacturing. India was also an attractive alternative due to availability of manufacturing skills at scale.

“PLI built the runway, but Apple’s supply chain diversification gave the take-off, real velocity,” says Varun Gupta, co-founder, GOBOULT, a wearables and audio brand. India’s hi-tech electronics manufacturing boom is a result of focused policy actions combined with structural global shifts. “The government created a framework through PLI which reduced entry risk and enabled large-scale commitments by global lead firms,” says Pankaj Mohindroo, chairman, Indian Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA).

The PLI scheme for electronics was launched with an initial outlay of Rs 40,951 crore. As of March 2026, the government had disbursed around Rs 18,000 crore as incentives to companies. Apple’s vendors — Foxconn, Pegatron and Wistron, whose India operations were later acquired by Tata Electronics—have helped it build scale.

Today, Apple has five iPhone factories in India (in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka), alongside a domestic supply chain of around 45 companies. The ecosystem has generated more than 250,000 direct jobs, according to data submitted by vendors to MeitY, and an estimated 750,000 indirect jobs. “Incentives obviously are required to build and scale up the ecosystem. The government has done a good job with PLI,” Raina said, on being asked whether the industry would have scaled without PLI.

And it’s not just Apple. Other players are also helping build the ecosystem. In July 2018, Samsung inaugurated a large mobile factory in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, which now produces a significant part of its devices sold in India.

“No country has developed on the back of white-collar work alone,” says JS Gujral, managing director of Syrma SGS. The Gurugram-based electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company provides turnkey solutions, including product design, printed circuit board (PCB) assembly, prototyping and electronics manufacturing. “Manufacturing creates the blue-collar base that drives broader economic growth. In India’s case, the smartphone boom has done exactly that—drawing new workers into factory employment at a large scale,” he says.

The electronics PLI ended in March this year. From importing handsets, PLI 1.0 made India a net exporter of handsets. Now, PLI 2.0 is in the works for which the industry is reportedly looking at extended sops (PLI cashbacks of 4-6% of incremental sales) while the government wants the industry to scale up its act and boost local value addition. India is set to introduce a new PLI scheme for mobile phone exports by May. This initiative will likely have an outlay exceeding $5 billion. The goal is to significantly boost the country’s mobile phone exports and reduce dependence on imported components to eventually shift from being an assembler to a ground-up manufacturer.

Expanding the pie

Over the years, Asia has emerged as a hub for electronic manufacturing. While China makes iPhones and other Apple products, and has its own brands like OnePlus, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, Thailand and Malaysia produce components, including display panels, PCBs and specialised electronics. Vietnam has factories assembling smartphones for brands such as Samsung and Google.

India’s transition resembles a 4×400- metre relay race. The first leg was assembly. The second is component localisation. The third is design and the fourth will be the emergence of global Indian champions.

-Vinod Sharma, Chairman, CII’s National Committee on Electronics Manufacturing

“India is now broadly on a par with global peers in assembly and testing. The bottleneck lies elsewhere, in components manufacturing,” says Prachir Singh, senior research analyst at Counterpoint Research. In India, domestic value addition in smartphones is still modest. The ICEA pegs broader electronics value addition around 18-20%, with a target of 30-35% over the next five years. China’s local value addition is 40%. According to Vinod Sharma, Chairman of the CII’s National Committee on Electronics Manufacturing, the local value addition is 15-20%. “The strategic roadmap aims to push this to 35-40% for smartphones by 2030,” he says.

The dependence on imports for electronic components—advanced semiconductors, display panels, camera modules and a range of key electronics parts—is high. “The ecosystem depends heavily on imported high-value components, typically in the 60-70% range for many electronic categories,” says Gupta. For example, India is assembling more audio and wearable products, but core electronic components going into smartphones and other devices are sourced from outside.

Low local value addition means the country is mostly an assembler of imported components rather than having a robust local components ecosystem that helps derisk from global supply chain shocks and currency fluctuations. “India’s transition resembles a 4×400-metre relay race. The first leg was assembly. The second is component localisation. The third is design—circuits, systems and product engineering. The fourth will be the emergence of global Indian champions with their own brands and intellectual property,” says Sharma of CII.

Unlike an actual relay, though, the runners do not leave the track. Assembly, components, and design all continue in parallel. This shift can be seen in EMS factories as they expand into areas beyond smartphone assemblies. For instance, Syrma SGS is investing around Rs 1,600 crore over five years in single-layer, multi-layer, HDI (high-density interconnect) and flex-rigid flex PCBs, as well as copper-clad laminates. It is also expanding in wound components, wire harnesses and camera modules. Noida-based EMS player Optiemus Infracom is building products across smartphones, tablets, hearables, wearables, routers, modems, soundboxes and fintech hardware such as point-of-sale devices.

The industry has evolved from basicassembly of imported parts to higher local value addition. Local capabilities have improved in PCB fabrication, testing, calibration.

-Ashok Gupta, Director, Optiemus Infracom

“The industry has evolved from basic assembly of imported parts to higher local value addition. Local capabilities have improved in PCB fabrication, testing, calibration of products and components and software integration. Yet around 60% inputs are still imported,” says Ashok Gupta, director, Optiemus Infracom.

Even as imports remain high, a new Bengaluru-headquartered contract manufacturer, with its network of in-house and partner factories, is making everything from laptop motherboards and bluetooth speakers to transformers and smart meters. GOBOULT sees local manufacturing momentum spreading across TWS earbuds, bluetooth audio, smartwatches, laptops, tablets and smart TVs.

Gujral says, “There has been a paradigm shift over the last seven-eight years in electronics manufacturing in India. Local value addition has consistently been going up, and imports now constitute 50-60% of the material cost.” Once the investments committed under the Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme get executed, Gujral believes that domestic value addition will see an estimated increase of 5%.

Industry experts expect growth in components manufacturing as well, despite India’s smartphone market experiencing its weakest Q1 in six years. According to Counterpoint Research, rising memory component costs have triggered over 15% price hikes, leading to a 9% sales decline, early in the year, particularly hitting the entry-to-mid range segments. Interestingly, this accelerates the case for higher value addition, as locally sourced components will cost less.

Closing the China gap

In the Asian story, so far, China has had the edge in scale and integration of high-tech manufacturing, though leadership in specific technologies is shared with countries like Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. While no country manufactures all components for electronics, most successful countries have managed to increase local value addition by sourcing more components locally.

Hisense India’s product portfolio includes televisions and air-conditioners. The Chinese appliances and electronics maker started local production of room air-conditioners in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh, in 2026. Much like in smart electronic gadgets, appliances too have considerable electronic components. These include microcontrollers, PCBs and sensors that handle power regulation, signal processing and control logic, among other things. “While China continues to be a large-scale global manufacturing hub for us, local production in India enables close alignment with domestic demand, faster supply-chain response and ability to customise products,” says Pankaj Rana, CEO, Hisense India.

That logic is now spreading across categories once seen as peripheral to the smartphone narrative: hearables, wearables, smart bulbs, laptops, tablets, telecom equipment and other critical electronics parts. India is becoming a fast-growing hub not only for standalone gadgets but also for electronics inside consumer durable and connected products. “The conversation has shifted from design software alone to manufacturing applications that help machines talk to one another, automate production planning, optimise logistics and simulate factory operations using virtual twins,” says Deepak NG, managing director, Dassault Systèmes India. Dassault Systèmes provides software for various manufacturing sectors, including aerospace and life sciences. Speed and quality, Deepak argues, are the two non-negotiables if India wants to compete globally. China’s advantage has not only been cost; it has been the ability to deliver with consistency and speed. Indian manufacturers cannot match that through conventional methods alone. They need technology, software, digital production systems, simulation tools and process control.

As Apple and the wider ecosystem gear up to scale manufacturing in India, it will also have to address a few challenges. First is the lack of localistion. India has become consistent in assembling finished goods, but that is only one part of the value chain. The more technology-intensive the component, the more likely it is to be imported. Semiconductor fabrication for cutting-edge chips that go into smartphones, computers and other hi-tech electronics will need to scale up. Display panels, image sensors and advanced camera systems are still globally concentrated industries. Even where India is adding value, it is often doing so in lower-value sections such as enclosures, batteries, mechanics and sub-assembly.

The second challenge is capital. The founder of an EMS company who wished not to be named says “access to finance is a major constraint, especially for smaller manufacturers. Expanding a factory, funding inventory or even financing exports can be difficult. For instance, for export to the US, someone must fund the passage, as the product will be at sea for around 60 days. The customer doesn’t want to fund it as they are used to China funding it. The Indian supplier can’t fund it, leading to critical gaps in the process.”

The third is fragmentation. Germany and China have clusters like Bavaria and Shenzhen, respectively, where suppliers, tooling shops, logistics providers and assemblers work within a short radius, creating powerful productivity gains. India’s ecosystem is far more dispersed. That raises coordination costs and slows discovery. It also means Tier II and Tier III suppliers—often the backbone of component localisation—need more support in technology adoption and process upgrades. The fourth is culture and capability. Indian manufacturing still underuses software and technology. MSMEs (key component of the ecosystem) need digital tools to become globally competitive. Building a manufacturing powerhouse is not simply a matter of incentives and plants; it requires new ways of engineering, planning, process discipline and investment in research and development.

“The government is pushing a lot, but entrepreneurs also must pick up, spend more on R&D so that complete products can be made in India. Otherwise, India will primarily be a contract manufacturer to the world,” says Saurabh Agarwal, tax partner, EY India.

Previously, there were almost 100 local mobile handset brands, including Lemon, Karbonn Mobiles, Micromax, Intex and others. But almost all of them either folded up, scaled down operations or shifted gears to manufacturing only. The entry of low cost Chinese brands with new features and new models impacted their market share.

It took China decades to turn contract manufacturing into a broader industrial ecosystem. India has made a good start. Can it cross the finishing line?