HMD Global, the new home of Nokia phones has revealed its plans to step up the local manufacturing capacity and the Finnish upstart company is also hoping to double revenue from the Indian market. Speaking to PTI, HMD Global CEO Florian Seiche said India is among its top regions and "probably the single largest market" for the company. "India is a cornerstone for our future growth. We are investing significantly in manufacturing, expanding our retail presence... We expect to double our revenue and manufacturing capacity this year. It (India) is a key market for both feature and smartphones," he added.
Seiche, however, declined to comment on the revenue details. HMD has a partnership with Foxconn to manufacture its devices in Chennai. Other leading markets for HMD include Vietnam, Indonesia, Russia and Mexico.
Once a dominant player in the Indian market, Nokia began to see a global downfall around 2012 due to its slow response to changing trends like dual SIM and touchscreen smartphones. In 2017, Nokia returned to the market with HMD as the new owner of the brand and lined up 11 devices in 12 months.
The Indian market continues to be extremely competitive with the top 5 brands - Xiaomi, Samsung, Vivo, Oppo and Transsion, accounting for 79% share of the smartphone market in June 2018 quarter.
According to research firm IDC, smartphone shipments in India grew 20% totalling 33.5 million units during the quarter. Feature phone market also remained resilient with shipments of 44 million units in June 2018 quarter with a growth of 29% year-on-year.
Florian Seiche spoke to reporters at the company's event in New Delhi, where HMD launched two new online-only smartphones in the sub-continent. The Nokia 6.1 Plus and the Nokia 5.1 Plus smartphones were unveiled yesterday as Flipkart exclusives. The Nokia 6.1 Plus with Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 SoC has been priced aggressively at Rs 15,999, while the price of the Nokia 5.1 Plus will be revealed next month along with the availability date.
