Prabhu RamSmartphone production in India will fall by 38-40% in the first half of 2020, a new report by Cybermedia Research (CMR) estimated. The Indian smartphone industry faced supply shortages due to shutdown of factories in China in February. Manufacturing here was hurt because the industry couldn’t source components required for production here. Factories in China had shut down near the end of January due to the Chinese New Year holidays, but couldn’t come back up till almost the end of February due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
However, Chinese factories have restarted operations to some extent now, but manufacturing in India has been halted now due to the 21-day lockdown of the country announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24.
Two of the top five smartphone sellers in India — Xiaomi and Realme — postponed their scheduled smartphone launches yesterday. Xiaomi was supposed to launch the flagship Mi 10 smartphone while Realme was expected to announce a new series of phones under the “Narzo” banner.
“Our current India smartphone market assessment points to a bleak picture for smartphone production, with some promise in H2 (second half) 2020,” said Prabhu Ram, head, Industry Intelligence, CMR.
According to Ram, the shutdowns caused by the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus in the country will have a “full blown impact in Q2 2020″. While the industry weathered the storm caused by shutdowns in China in the first two months of the year, the report said that closure of smartphone factories in India in March have “dented recovery prospects” in the first half of the year.
Source: Livemint
