India’s Electronics Manufacturing Boom Driven by Mobile Phones
India’s electronics production has evolved in the past decade into a quickly growing manufacturing ecosystem, instead of maintaining a high dependence on imports. With the solid government policy support, the growing domestic demand, and repositioning of the global supply chain, India has registered a sudden growth in the value of electronics manufacturing. The industry has grown at an amazing pace starting with consumer electronics and industrial electronics to strategic and medical electronics. But this has not been distributed equally. The manufacturing of mobile phones has turned out to be the largest determinant consequently changing the industry structure by churning the value creation into one segment of the industry.
The Scale of Growth in India’s Electronics Manufacturing
The electronics manufacturing industry of India covers various segments such as consumer electronics, industrial electronics, IT hardware, electronic components, automotive electronics, medical equipment and strategic electronics as applied in defence and aerospace.
India’s electronics production increased by ₹1.9 lakh crore to a value of about ₹9.5 lakh crore between 2014-15 and 2023-24. Temporary forecasts of 2024-25 indicate that it is possible to reach ₹11.3 lakh crore in production which will be a multi fold of 10 years. The production increased by almost 20%(compound annual growth rate or CAGR) between 2020-21 to 2023-24 which underlines the need to note that the sector is accelerating faster.
The policy measures including the National Policy on Electronics (2019), Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) plans, and the India Semiconductor Mission have contributed to this growth, to make domestic production stronger and to lower the level of reliance on imports.
Mobile Phones: The Core Growth Engine
The most notable aspect of the story of the electronics development in India is the prevalence of mobile phones. In 2014-15, mobile phone specifications in volume constituted only 10% of total electronics production value. By 2023-24, they had already increased to 44% and mobile production became the main contributor to the industry.
Mobile manufacturing units have grown exponentially not only in 2014-15 but also to approximately 300 by 2024-25. Meanwhile, there was a sharp decline in import dependence – down to almost nothing, compared with about 75%. This has made India a significant mobile phone manufacturing hub in the world especially to export.
Shifting Shares of Other Electronics Segments
Total production has increased, still, some of the areas have experienced declining shares. In 2014-15, consumer electronics accounted for 29% of all production but in 2023-24, it is approximately 11%. The same case applied in industrial electronics which dropped to 11% as compared to 21%.
It means that even though these segments are still expanding, absolutely, they have not been able to keep up with the booming growth in the production of the mobile phones and the industry has become more concentrated.
Why This Concentration Matters
The electronics industry is strategic in terms of productivity, technology and strategic independence. India has been a significant opportunity in the context of the increasing diversity of global supply chains because of the geopolitical and economic factors. Nonetheless, the excessive use of mobile phones also demonstrates the necessity to expand the possibilities in components, semiconductors, and high-value electronics to have balanced and resilient growth.
