Huawei has started manufacturing of Honor 7X, its latest budget smartphone, at Flex’s plant in Sriperumbudur, near Chennai in India.
Flex is the manufacturing outsourcing partner for Huawei India. The latest development indicates that Huawei is making three smartphones — Holly 3, Honor 6X and Honor 7X — in India, the second largest mobile phone market in the world.
The company said Huawei Honor started smartphone manufacturing in association with Flex India in September 2016. Holly 3 was the first smartphone under the Make in India initiative. Later, the company produced Honor 6X in India.
Huawei does not reveal the volume of smartphones being manufactured in India.
In addition to setting up manufacturing base in India, the company has expanded its service network with four new Exclusive Service Centers in key metro cities.
“Honor and Huawei will keep evaluating the demands for the product in India and will keep trying to up the ante for indigenous production and localization,” said P Sanjeev, vice-president, Sales, Huawei Consumer Business Group.
The devices company said Honor brand achieved a 3x growth in Q4 2017 as compared to Q4 2106, primarily due to the success of Honor 7x.
The China-based Huawei said Honor led the global online smartphone market with a global shipment value of $2.5 billion to become the number 1 online smartphone brand, as per International Data Corporation (IDC) in Q1 2017.
Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, including its dual brands Huawei and Honor, shipped 139 million smartphones globally in 2016 and reported an increase of 44 percent in its annual revenue.
Analyst firm IDC says global smartphone shipments will grow from 1.5 billion units in 2017 to 1.7 billion units in 2021.
Xiaomi, which overtook Samsung as the leader in India smartphone market, entered India in July 2014. Xiaomi has two smartphone manufacturing plants in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh and it assembles more than 95 percent of its smartphones sold in India.
“As Xiaomi’s market share reaches saturation point in India, and the phone market continues to shrink in China, it must contend with slower growth for its smartphone business as it begins to expand in other countries,” said Rushabh Doshi, analyst at Canalys.
Leading analyst firm Canalys says Xiaomi, Samsung, Vivo, Oppo and Lenovo are the top five smartphone brands in India in Q4 2017. India’s total smartphone shipments were nearly 30 million units in Q4. Huawei is yet to make it to the top five list despite its strong financial power and innovative phones.
Baburajan K
