Efforts to boost smartphone manufacturing in India are being impacted by a lack of skilled labour, absence of component suppliers and a complex tax regime, Reuters said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make in India effort resulted in a number of vendors setting up manufacturing plants in the country to take advantage of benefits available in terms of taxation. But these have essentially focused on assembling devices manufactured elsewhere, with none of the higher-value production work done in the country.

An unnamed senior executive with a Chinese smartphone maker, cited by Reuters said: “Rather than feeling that India is a place where I should be making mobile phones, it’s more like this is the place I need to (assemble) phones because there is lower duty if I import components and assemble here.”

India also faced a number of high-profile tax disputes, including one involving the handset manufacturing activities of Nokia. These cases are high in people’s memories when it comes to doing business in the country. A new nationwide sale tax is “fraught with its own challenges”.

Reuters also said another Chinese smartphone maker source said some companies were rattled by labour unrest: “Labour laws are lax, there’s little effort to build a component ecosystem and logistics, and transport remains a big problem.”

Aruna Sundarajan, India’s telecoms secretary, said getting device assembly to the country is a start, and “we want to move up the value chain”. Production of more components including chargers and batteries is expected to lead to the manufacture of more lucrative parts in future.

Language support
Separately, it was reported Indian authorities had pushed back the deadline for Indian language support on mobile handsets, set for 1 October 2017 (although this had already been delayed once).

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology moved the deadline to 1 February 2018 following “concerns from manufacturers”, Slator said.

India’s government will require handsets to handle input in English, Hindi, and at least one other official Indian language, and offer the ability to read messages in all 22 official languages.

It was noted SMS had become a tool for official messages in times of disasters, and for the distribution of health, education and welfare information – and efficiency would be improved if offered in native languages.