Mobile phone exports up 39% in first 4 months of FY25, led by iPhone

India’s mobile phone exports recorded impressive growth figures in the first four months of the fiscal year 2024-’25 (FY25), or April to July this year. Driven primarily by iPhones that Apple makes in India, exports hit $6.49 billion and registered a surge of 39 per cent year on year compared to the previous fiscal.

In the month of July, export of mobile phones was worth more than $1.6 billion at a growth rate of 68 per cent year or year. Compared to FY23, the rise in FY25 export figures of mobile phones across brands is a phenomenal 159 per cent.

The overall upward trend in mobile phone exports, and Apple’s iPhones in particular, can be attributed to success of the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for smartphone manufacturers that the government of India launched in 2020. Apple’s three vendors — Foxconn, Wistron (now Tata Electronics) and Pegatron — as well as Samsung and Padget are a part of the PLI scheme.

Apple’s Foxconn factory in Tamil Nadu started manufacture in 2021 while Pegatron began operations in the state a year later. This is the first time since the PLI scheme was introduced that iPhone exports have consistently been over $1 billion in each month, from April to July 2024.

The total export figure of iPhone in the first four months of FY25 was $4.5 billion, which accounts for nearly 70 per cent of overall mobile export revenues that India garnered between April and July 2024.

Samsung is a distant second when it comes to manufacturing mobile phones in India for export, with a 23 per cent share. The rest of the brands together account for the remaining 7 per cent of the export chunk.

Samsung is participating across the entire five-year period of the PLI scheme, having started in 2020, with the tenure ending with the current fiscal year. The brand mainly manufactures in Uttar Pradesh.