Smartphone exports may have topped $30 billion in 2025 on PLI push

Phones make up 38% of India's outbound shipments since 2021 on PLI push

In a record-breaking showing, smartphone exports from India — driven by the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme — are likely to have reached $30 billion over the 12 months from January to December 2025, accounting for 38 per cent of the country’s total smartphone exports over the past five years since 2021. 

Between 2021 and 2025, India’s smartphone exports reached nearly $80 billion ($79.03 billion), with the latest year delivering the highest exports recorded in any 12-month period. 

Apple’s iPhone shipments, valued at more than $22 billion during this period, made up roughly 75 per cent of total smartphone exports. The $30 billion figure for 2025 marks a 47 per cent rise over the $20.45 billion logged in the corresponding 12 months of 2024. This outcome largely stems from a focused policy intervention through the smartphone PLI scheme announced in 2020, shortly before the pandemic lockdown. 

Of the 14 PLI schemes introduced in 2020, the smartphone PLI is widely seen as the most effective in export terms. It also underscored the role global value chains, led by Apple Inc, can play in reshaping an industry by bringing India into their supply networks.

 

Mobile phones, ranked 167th on India’s export list in 2015, have since climbed to become the country’s largest exported product. 

Following the PLI rollout in 2021, India exported smartphones worth $4.85 billion, mainly from Samsung and domestic manufacturers. In 2022, as the economy moved past pandemic disruptions and two of Apple’s three factories began operations, exports nearly doubled — up 94 per cent from 2021 to $9.43 billion. Growth carried into 2023, with exports rising more than 51 per cent year-on-year to $14.3 billion as all three Apple facilities came on stream. In 2024, smartphone exports crossed $20 billion for the first time, reaching $20.45 billion. 

March 2025 marked the highest-ever monthly smartphone exports at $3.16 billion, overtaking the earlier record of $2.92 billion set in January the same year. In 2024, monthly exports cleared the $2 billion threshold for the first time, doing so in three of the 12 months. Over the past year, exports topped $2 billion in 10 of 12 months, with only August and September — traditionally lean periods — falling to $1.52 billion and $1.68 billion, respectively.