Honor made a comeback in India recently with the launch of Honor 90 smartphone. In an interview with the Economic Times, Madhav Sheth shared several insights and critical business decisions that the company will be taking in the coming months.
Honor plans for India
- In the report, HTech is currently in talks with three contract manufacturers in India for the production of Honor phones in the country.
- Honor phones will be manufactured in India starting Q1 2024, confirms HTech head.
- HTech had already invested Rs 400 crore towards setting up operations and distributions in India.
- After the Honor 90 in India, HTech is planning on bringing more models to India in the coming months. However, specifics like timelines or models are not revealed at the moment.
- The company is apparently targeting to sell over 50,000 units of Honor 90 during the festive season across online and offline stores.
- The brand is expected to drive Rs 60 crore worth of sales during the season.
More brands towards ‘Make in India’
Not just Honor, most popular brands across the world are slowly showing interest towards manufacturing in India, thanks to the ‘Make in India’ push and investment incentives from governments for those opting for local production. We already have Samsung, with one of the biggest mobile manufacturing units in India, at Noida specifically. Samsung makes budget phones to flagship models at the facility.
Then we have Apple, producing its latest iPhone 15 in India already and there are reports that the iPhone 15 Plus model will be made locally by next quarter. We are also hearing that the Cupertino giant is chalking about plans to make iPads in India as well.
Besides Samsung and Apple, the leading smartphone brand, iQOO also clarified earlier this year that the models it sells in India are being made locally at its Noida unit. The brand apparently has the capacity to make 50 million phones in one year.
Then there is Tata, which was reported to become the first Indian brand to manufacture iPhones in India. According to reports online, Tata Group is expected to take over Wistron’s operations in India. Wistron has a facility in Karnataka and the factory is potentially valued at more than $600 million. Tata Group could use this facility to make iPhones for Apple.
We also have Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo actively making their leading models in India and are ever expanding their capacity.
