Eyeing aggressive growth in India, Finnish company HMD Global — which sells the iconic Nokia brand of phones — is working hard towards manufacturing its own components in the country, a top company executive has emphasised.
The company, which has sold 70 million Nokia devices globally, has grown its business nearly five times in the past eight months in India.
According to Counterpoint Research, Nokia was at fifth spot in the feature phones market with six per cent share (as of December 2017).
“We are following the phased manufacturing programme. In line with this, we have started having conversations with our partner Foxconn to manufacture our own components in the country,” Ajey Mehta, Vice President and Country Head-India, HMD Global, told IANS in an interview.
“It will happen over a period of time. We may be a little behind, but it will eventually happen and the components that attract import duty will be manufactured here,” Mehta added.
With an aim to boost domestic manufacturing, the government has imposed a 10 percent duty on import of key components such as camera module and printed circuit board assembly.
The company said it will also work with Foxconn to set up surface-mount technology lines.
Surface-mount technology (SMT) is a method for producing electronic circuits in which the components are mounted or placed directly on to the surface of printed circuit boards (PCBs).
“It will take some time, but we will do that for sure,” Mehta told IANS.
HMD Global got the licence in 2016 to sell Nokia-branded devices for the next 10 years and displayed its first line-up last year.
