Telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co has reportedly been given security clearance to start manufacturing telecom equipment in India. This could make Huawei the first Chinese company to manufacture products in India locally. The company has received the green light from the Ministry of Home Affairs, 19 months after first applying for the manufacturing license. The move not only marks a win for Huawei, but also for the Make In India campaign, which is being propagated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Huawei’s President of consumer business group, Allen Wang, told Reuters that the company considers India to be an important overseas market for itself and wants to be amongst the top three brands in the country within three years. The license will allow Huawei to manufacture smartphones in the country, alongside its other products. The Indian smartphone market is amongst the fastest growing markets in the world with over 975 million phone subscriptions and nearly 150 million smartphone subscribers. An HSBC report forecasts these numbers to grow at 26 per cent per annum till 2019.
It is important to note that the final approvals for Huawei to manufacture in India are still pending, but it should get them soon. This would make Huawei the first Chinese smartphone maker to manufacture products in India. The company has already set up R&D centers in the country and also manufactures for export from Tamil Nadu.
Chinese smartphone makers are slowly creeping into the Indian market, taking away the market share from giants such as Samsung and others. While there’s still a big enough gap, companies like Lenovo, Huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE and Coolpad have been trying out product strategies in India and are getting more attention with each passing month.
Huawei Technologies though has more potential than most other Chinese smartphone makers. This is because the company has already established itself as a big player in other segments, such as routers, WiFi extenders etc. In fact, Huawei recently made these products available to consumers, while they were earlier enterprise only products.