Xiaomi ties up with Foxconn to assemble smartphones

Mumbai, August 10

China’s Xiaomi Inc has tied up with Taiwan’s Foxconn to start assembling phones in India, seeking to cut costs and grab a bigger slice of the world’s third-largest smartphone market.

It is another key win for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to turn his country into a manufacturing powerhouse with his ‘Make in India’ campaign and comes on the heels of a separate announcement by Foxconn to invest $5 billion in an electronics manufacturing facility.

A lack of good infrastructure and suppliers have hampered efforts to manufacture smartphones in the country, forcing most of India’s more than 100 different phone companies to obtain their products from China and Taiwan.

An assembly line in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh will, from today, begin rolling out Xiaomi’s first locally made smartphone, the Redmi2 Prime, company executives said.

The Indian market, which Xiaomi entered in July last year, has fast become its second-largest market as the company’s low-priced, feature-rich phones find favour with young and cost-conscious customers.

In the April to June quarter, Xiaomi ranked seventh in terms of smartphone shipments in India — a segment that is dominated by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and India’s Micromax Informatics Ltd, according to Counterpoint Research.