The South Korean tech giant Samsung has reportedly decided to shift some of the manufacturing of its smartphones from Vietnam to India.
Vietnam is home to 61 percent of Samsung’s total production of smartphones, accounting for over 182 million units manufactured in two of the company’s facilities. The company is aiming to reduce this to 50 percent, or around 163 million units per year, according to The Elec.
India accounts for 20% of Samsung’s global smartphone production capacity. The share of equipment made in India will now increase to 29%, said the report. Samsung currently manufactures over 65 million smartphones in India.
The global handset maker will work on increasing the manufacturing capacity to 93 million smartphones next year.
Samsung plans to invest $90 million to expand the manufacturing facilities in India, the report added.
According to local media reports, this makes sense since Samsung’s production facility in India is claimed to be the world’s largest mobile factory. It was inaugurated in July 2018.
Before the pandemic hit, Samsung was on course to increase the production capacity in India to 120 million units. That, however, did not happen, and it seems Samsung is settling for a much lower figure of 93 million units a year in India in the immediate future.
Chinese media reports said that when the restructuration of smartphone manufacturing is complete, Vietnam will still manage half of Samsung’s smartphone production, while India will account for 29% and Indonesia 6%.
Incidentally, Vietnam is the world’s second-largest exporter of smartphones after China.
