‘Spake’ In India: Chinese Phone Maker Vivo Acquires 169 Acres In UP To Boost Mobile Phone Production

Chinese smartphone maker Vivo on Thursday announced that it has acquired 169 acres of land in Uttar Pradesh and will spend Rs. 4,000 crore to set up its second manufacturing plant in India, Reuters reported.

The company has acquired the land in the Yamuna Expressway region in Uttar Pradesh, near its existing 50-acre manufacturing facility to expand Vivo’s manufacturing capabilities.

The existing manufacturing set-up, which saw an investment of Rs 300 crore, operates at a capacity of 2 million units per month with a more-than-5,000 workforce. The new plant is expected to generate 5,000 additional jobs in the first phase of expansion. Vivo also plans to double the current production capacity to 50 million units per annum.

Propelled by the flagship ‘Make In India’ scheme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that seeks to make the country a hub for smartphone manufacturing, India is now the world’s second-biggest mobile phone maker.

The mobile handset manufacturing ecosystem in India, which has developed in the last four years, has saved a whopping Rs 3 trillion by replacing imports of completely-built units (CBU) with locally manufactured and assembled handsets during the period, said a new report on Wednesday.

Chinese smartphone companies dominate India’s mobile phone sector. India is now the world’s second largest market and world’s fastest growing market for smartphones and offers a lucrative future to Chinese mobile phone companies. Chinese mobile phone brands Vivo and Oppo shipped 4.5 million and 3.6 million units, respectively, in India in the third quarter of this year, up by 12 per cent and down by 2 per cent, making them the third- and fourth-largest phone vendors respectively in the country.

Another Chinese company, Xiaomi, was the standout performer, shipping more than 12 million smartphones in India in the third quarter, growing by 32 per cent on a yearly basis, making it the largest smartphone vendor in India.
An $18 billion firm that was founded in 2010, Xiaomi entered India in 2014 with an aggressive online blitz. Today, the it has captured 30 per cent market share in India, selling as many as 12 million smartphones in Q3 2018.

Shipments by South Korean brand Samsung slipped by 2 per cent, but the company still managed to be the second-largest phone vendor in the country.