Telecom Lead Asia: Samsung India will start manufacturing its Galaxy S4 smartphone in India.
At present, Samsung is heavily promoting Galaxy S4 in India to retain its leading position in smartphone market.
“We are planning to start manufacturing of S4 soon at our Noida facility,” said Samsung Mobile and Digital Imaging Country Head Vineet Taneja.
He, according to a PTI report, refused to share any time frame by when the production will start.
The Noida, Delhi – NCR, facility is manufacturing about 35-40 million phones annually, including 12 smartphones such as Galaxy S3. Samsung currently imports the recently launched Galaxy S4 from South Korea.
Samsung is planning to manufacture Galaxy S 4 in India at a time when the Korean electronics giant is facing shortage of the high end smartphones in the U.S. market.
Globally, Samsung had shipped 70.7 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2013 against Apple’s 37.4 million.
Smartphone market share of top 5 players in Q1 2013
The company is also looking to double up the high-end smartphone (above Rs 20,000) market size in India, which is currently contributing around 10-12 per cent of the overall smartphone market.
IDC says the overall mobile phone market in India reached 218 million units in 2012, up 16 percent. Of this, 16.3 million units were smartphones that grew 48 percent.
South Korea’s consumer electronics, which is battling legal issues in the U.S. and other markets, said its net profit soared 41.6 percent to 7.15 trillion won ($6.4 billion) in the first quarter of 2013 from 5.05 trillion won in the first quarter of 2012.
Samsung recently said its smartphone sales contributed to 41.6 percent growth in net profit to $6.4 billion in Q1 2013. Strong sales of the Galaxy S3 smartphone aided profit margins, but cautioned that second quarter global demand was forecast to dampen.
