Samsung to start manufacturing of Galaxy S4 in India soon

Samsung India today said it will soon start manufacturing its flagship high-end smartphone Galaxy S4 in India.

"We are planning to start manufacturing of S4 soon at our Noida facility," Samsung Mobile and Digital Imaging Country Head Vineet Taneja told PTI.

He, however, refused to share any time frame by when the production will start. The Noida facility is manufacturing about 35-40 million phones annually, including 12 smartphones such as Galaxy S3.

The company currently imports the recently launched Galaxy S4 from South Korea.

Sensing huge demand for Galaxy S4, the company is also looking to double up the high-end smartphone (above Rs 20,000) market size in India, which is currently contributing around 10-12% of the overall smartphone market.

The Galaxy S4, which is packed with newer imaging features as well as 'gesture-control' technology, has a five-inch full HD super AMOLED touchscreen, 13 mega pixel rear and 2 mega pixel front camera and supports 3G networks.

Although Samsung is the market leader in smartphone market in India, competition from Apple, BlackBerry and Nokia has put pressure on it to add new software features to maintain its lead.

According to research firm IDC, the overall mobile phone market in India reached about 218 million units in 2012, growing 16% year-on-year.

Of this, 16.3 million units were smartphones, but the category saw a growth of about 48%. Samsung was the leader in the quadcore and 5-inch plus screen size models, IDC added.

The demand for smartphones is expected to be around 34-36 million units this year.

Globally, Samsung had 30.3% share of the smartphone market (with sales of 215.8 million units) in 2012, while Apple had a 19.1% share with sales of 135.9 million units, according to IDC.