Smart phones have become the single largest item exported by India to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), its second biggest export market for goods, in April-July period of this year. Smart phone shipments to the West Asian country in the period left behind petroleum products like gasoline and aviation turbine fuel, which have traditionally been the largest items in the export basket for UAE.
In the April-July period of this financial year smartphone exports to UAE were $ 836.36 million, up 25.7% on year. This is higher than exports of aviation turbine fuel at $723.3 million and gasoline $551.6 million.
The US has emerged as the biggest importer of India-made smartphones buying $1.67 billion worth of these devices in April-July, up 489.4% from the same period last year. The US is also the biggest export market for India and smartphones and these have the second biggest share of the export basket behind diamonds.
In April-July India exported $4.15 billion worth of smartphones in total showing a growth of 99% on year. Netherlands, Uk and Italy follow the US and UAE as the biggest buyers of smartphones from India.
In FY 23 total export of smartphones from India was $10.9 billion. In that year UAE was the biggest market for India for the product with $2.56 billion in sales followed by the US at $2.15 billion. In the first two months of this fiscal itself the US became the top market for India’s smartphones.
Prior to FY 23 the smartphone exports were non-existent so the data was not captured. After the announcement of Production Linked Incentives (PLI) and the entry of Apple in local manufacturing, India is gradually emerging as a production base for smartphones. According to reports, Apple alone accounts for a little less half of India’s smartphone exports.