Huawei to start smartphone production in India from next month

Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies will start manufacturing handsets in India from next month, joining compatriots like Xiaomi and Lenovo to set up factories in the world's fastest growing smartphone market.
The world's third largest smartphone maker has joined hands with contract manufacturer Flextronics International to produce handsets at a facility in Chennai.
The facility will make three million units initially and provide 10,500 jobs, Huawei announced today.
Targeting a 10 per cent share in Indian smartphone market, Huawei also plans to expand its Indian retail network by raising the number of outlets it partners to more than 50,000 by the end of the year.

While inaugurating the Chennai facility from here, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, "The investment in electronics manufacturing, which was around Rs 11,000 crore, has risen to Rs 1.24 lakh crore. It is a great sense of satisfaction, as indicated to me, this (Huawei) will be 40th manufacturing unit in the country."
Huawei will start production of its Honor series phones at the plant from October 1.

Chinese telecom companies have been setting shops in India after a slump in growth at home market. Recently, LeEco announced contract manufacturing facility with a capacity of 60,000 phones a month, rising eventually to 200,000.

"Today, we announce the start of manufacturing of our Honor phones in India with Flextronics. This underlines our long term commitment for India. Spectrum auction is coming and we will like to commit to Indian industry that we will make available all out latest technology product including 4G, 4G plus and 5G products," Huawei India Chief Executive Officer Jay Chen said.
He said that Huawei is the third-largest smartphone maker after Apple and Samsung.
"We have partnered with Flextronics who work with us globally to make our Honor series smartphones in the country. Initially we have tied up for 3 million units and will scale up as per demand. This project will create 3,000 direct employment opportunity at Huawei and 6,000 indirect jobs," P Sanjeev, Vice President -Sales (India Business Head for Huawei & honor Consumer Business).

He said that hiring of 3,000 people will be completed by the end of this year, taking Huawei's direct workforce to around 12,000 in India.
Flextronics will hire an additional 1,500 people to work on the Huawei project.
Reece said that Flextronics will provide after-sales
services, shipping of phones to retailers and reverse logistics when devices from customers for repairing needs to be picked up.
"We will set up 45 experience centres for Huawei initially," Reece said.
Sanjeev said that Huawei has tied up with 350 distributors to sell smartphones from over 50,000 retail counters in the country covering all the districts.

"We have been aggressively competing in India. Now I can say we are ready in all aspects for giving massive push to our business in India. We believe India will overtake the US as the second largest smartphone market in 2017. If we have to grow our rank globally, we need to focus on India," he said.
Huawei will sell both Huawei and Honor phones through offline channel partners.
IT Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said that Huawei's focus on research and development will add value to country's manufacturing ecosystem.
"We have been shown the kind of product Huawei's plan to make in India. Those kind of product will help start-up built their services on top of that," Sundararajan said.