Mobile phone exports from India continue to grow at a rapid pace. Led by iPhones, mobile phone exports for the first four months of the current fiscal – April-July – have touched $6.49 billion, a jump of 39% over the same period last fiscal.
Phone exports also saw an increase of 159% over FY23, showing a steady growth in mobile exports after the announcement of the smartphone PLI scheme.
In FY23, mobile exports for the first four months totalled $2.5 billion, while in FY24, they reached $4.67 billion.
For July, the total exports crossed $1.6 billion, registering a 68% growth over the same month last year, when mobile exports clocked in $951 million for the month.
Apple’s iPhone exports exceeded $1 billion for the fourth month running in the current fiscal. This is the first time since the launch of the PLI scheme that Apple’s iPhone exports have continuously crossed the $1-billion mark each month.
With total iPhone exports from India for the first four months hitting $4.5 billion, iPhone exports alone constitute close to 70% of the total mobile exports from India during the four-month period.
According to industry figures, Samsung has contributed close to 23% and the remaining 7% is from other sources, including a small fraction from Padget.
All three Apple vendors – Foxconn, Wistron (now Tata Electronics) and Pegatron — as well as Samsung and Padget are participants in the government’s smartphone PLI scheme announced in 2020.
Foxconn and Pegatron are located in Tamil Nadu and began operations in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
While Samsung will participate in all the five years of the PLI scheme, Pegatron’s participation will be restricted to four years since it began a year after the scheme was announced. Wistron, located out of Karnataka, is also in its fourth year, and after a slowdown in production during the takeover process by Tata Electronics, has expanded its production substantially. Samsung, whose operations are primarily located out of Uttar Pradesh, entered the scheme in 2020 immediately after the announcement, and the current fiscal is its last year as a participant in the PLI scheme.
In FY24, total mobile exports reached $15.58 billion, registering a 40% increase over FY23.
