Monday 2 November 2015

Oppo Puts Make in India Plans on Track with new Smartphone Models

Chinese electronics manufacturer Oppo is joining electronics majors such as Xiaomi, Gionee, and Motorola with its decision to now manufacture electronics on Indian shores. The company is the latest to have joined the ‘Make in India’ bandwagon, a program that hopes to provide a fresh boost to the Indian manufacturing sector by attracting more manufacturing investments in India.

Sources from Oppo Electronics said that the company intends to manufacture hundreds of its handsets in India, even as it recently unveiled its Oppo Neo 7 handset model here. This handset model was manufactured in India under the Make in India program. As the company firms up its plans to manufacture in India, it has said that it will do so via a partnership with Foxconn India. More concrete manufacturing plans will be drawn up if Oppo finds that its Indian manufacturing operations meet the desired quality parameters.

Oppo expects its Neo 7 smartphone to bring in high-volume sales given that the feature-loaded smartphone is priced just under INR 10,000.

Shedding light on Oppo’s manufacturing plans in India, the company’s Vice General Manager, Kai Feng, said that the company will initially manufacture only 4G models. With a recent Bank of America Merrill Lynch report estimating that India will have about 18 crore 4G smartphone users in the next three years, there is a burgeoning opportunity for handset manufacturers in the country.

Oppo has evidently recognized this opportunity, and will eventually set up a full-fledged manufacturing plant in the country. If all goes according to plan, its plant is expected to come up by the end of 2016. However, whether or not the company will be able to indeed meet this target remains to be seen considering that it hasn’t even purchased land in the country yet. Also, there is no clear indication of what production capacities Oppo is targeting in India.

Feng also said that in China, its home turf, the company has grown remarkably, coming second only to Apple in 4G handset sales. Top officials at Oppo have derived much of their optimism about the Indian market based on the encouraging sales of models such as OnePlus X.

No comments:

Post a Comment