Every major OEM these days is exploring manufacturing smartphones in India and many have even announced their plans to do so. HTC recently announced that it will be going the contract manufacturing way to make smartphones in India and now Gionee is planning to do the same as well.
As per a report, Gionee will look towards contract manufacturing for helping it achieve lower costs of manufacturing for its smartphones. This will in turn help it in pricing its smartphones better. Gionee has been sticking pre-dominantly to the offline retail model at a time when OEMs are going online-only in the country. Offline retail brings in higher investment in logistics and Gionee would be looking to save costs by manufacturing the devices locally.
Gionee has shortlisted three companies for contract manufacturing which include the likes of Foxconn Technology Group and Global Devices Network. Gionee will arrive at a final conclusion in the next two-three weeks and will make an announcement regarding the same post that. The local production of the smartphones is expected to commence by the end of the current calendar year.
The company will be devoting about Rs 300 crores for the manufacturing smartphones in India. It may even consider setting up its own facility in future. The smartphones under the “P” and “M” series will be the ones that will be produced locally. These are the ones forming the mid-range series of smartphones from the company and are present in a highly price sensitive market.
The likes of Xiaomi, HTC, Microsoft, LG, Micromax, Motorola, Lenovo, Asus, Celkon and Sony have already made their intentions of manufacturing smartphones in India clear.
