Reports say India is formulating new incentives for mobile phone manufacturing: subsidies will be linked to export volume and the proportion of local component usage.

IT Home, March 12 news: This afternoon, Bloomberg cited sources as saying that India is developing a new round of smartphone manufacturing incentive policies. Under the new policy, government subsidies will be linked to export scale and the proportion of locally used components; Apple, Samsung, and related suppliers are expected to benefit.

The new plan can be seen as the second phase of India’s smartphone manufacturing program. For the first time, the policy will clearly reward smartphone export companies, rather than simply encouraging local production. The current “Production Linked Incentive” (PLI) program will end on March 31, with the main goal of expanding domestic output.

By contrast, the new policy directly ties subsidies to exports and the level of localization.

IT Home learned from its report that Apple’s contract manufacturers account for about three-quarters of India’s smartphone exports, making India one of the fastest-growing smartphone export hubs in the world. Apple plans to produce most of the iPhones it sells in the U.S. by the end of this year in India, further boosting India’s position in the global smartphone supply chain.

Sources said that at present, nearly all smartphones sold in India are locally assembled, so the first-phase incentive policy has basically already met demand in the domestic market. The government’s next step is to increase the proportion of local value addition, gradually shifting from simple assembly to a more complete manufacturing system.

The Indian government also wants to encourage Chinese brands OPPO, vivo, and Xiaomi to expand exports; these brands currently mainly produce smartphones in India for the local market.

Another focus of the policy discussions is to raise localization requirements. Subsidies are expected to be issued in tiers based on the device’s local value-add proportion, rather than purely according to the number of units assembled. If companies purchase components such as camera modules and display components from Indian suppliers, they may also receive additional incentives. Devices that reach higher localization ratios and are used for exports are expected to receive the highest subsidies.

However, India still faces supply-chain challenges. Apple’s expansion speed locally is limited by factors such as a weak supplier base, high logistics costs, and difficulty matching China’s manufacturing scale and efficiency.

Although India has already attracted companies such as Apple and Samsung to set up large-scale assembly production lines, key components such as semiconductors and high-end modules still depend on imports. It is reported that the Indian government hopes to gradually move away from a model of only local assembly, integrate the manufacturing industry more deeply into the global supply chain, and compete with China for the global manufacturing hub position.