Xiaomi Likely To Manufacture Made In India Smartphones


BENGALURU: The Chinese handset maker, Xiaomi is planning on manufacturing the handsets in India and is on talks with its manufacturing partners in China to extend its support to India, reports Economic Times.

Apparently, Xiaomi had considered Nokia's manufacturing plant which is now inoperative near Chennai, for the assembly. However, it is tentative about it as the plant lacks the large component ecosystem needed to make Smartphones.

Manu Jain, head of Xiaomi's India operations said, "We've started talking to some potential partners to see if they can assemble the phones for us in India."

"We are beginning to explore, along with these partners, what are the regulatory constraints, the financials around it, how much investment we need to make, tax implications of setting up a manufacturing plant as it is far more complicated," Jain further added. "It will be the longest lead-time activity that we will do in India."

Xiaomi, the third largest handset vendor has sold more than 800,000 Mi 3 and Redmi 1S smartphones. Recently, the company launched the 3G and 4G versions of the Redmi Note. Supposedly, Xiaomi doesn't make smartphones, but designs the hardware and software and decides the components with handing it out to the manufacturing contracts.

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