The well known smartphone brand in India and China, Gionee, recently announced its new flagship smartphone, Elife E8, a few days ago and yesterday it was in the news yet again as it announced its first ‘Made in India smartphone’ in Vizag. The new F103 will be produced in India, for the Indian consumers. The smartphone will come with a MediaTek 1.3 GHz quad-core processor, a 5-inch HD 1280x720 IPS display with Dragontrail glass protection, 2GB of RAM, 16GB expandable storage, an 8MP rear and 5MP front camera and Android 5.0 Lollipop with Amigo 3.0 UI on top. The smartphone will also support 4G LTE speeds along with two SIM card slots.
Gionee was not the only company, self proclaimed “Flagship Killers’ OnePlus also announced that they will be locally producing its products in India. The company has revealed that local production of OnePlus’ upcoming devices will start before end of this year at the 30,000 sq. ft. facility at the Foxconn factory within the Sri City Integrated Business City in Andhra Pradesh. The facility will have an approximate capacity of producing up to 500,000 units per month, and hopes to fulfil demands in the country.
Apart from the above mentioned names, other brands including Lenovo, Xiaomi, Samsung, LG, Oppo and even Sony have already started producing locally whilst complying to the Make in India program. According to statistics, India has the second most mobile phones in the world sitting just behind China and it only makes sense for device makers to enter into local production. But do the companies really mass produce its products in India itself? Well some companies get their parts made and brought in from China and other countries and perform the final assembly and packaging. The factories are also restricted to certain models so as to maintain quality of products. For instance Lenovo is currently only producing the K3 Note in India and has not yet confirmed any other smartphone that will come out of their factory in India. Nonetheless, it is a tiny yet confident step towards making the country visible on the globe as a digital nation.
