India could have its own mobile phone brand, designed and manufactured in the country, by October 2028, according to Union Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
How India Is Building Smartphone Design Capabilities
The PCB serves as the foundation on which a phone’s electronic components are connected. Designing it requires expertise in hardware architecture and the integration of different systems. “Three years back, we gave this challenge to Indian designers. Why can’t you design the PCB, which is the motherboard of mobile phone.
Why can’t you design that?” he said.
Why Is It Difficult To Build An Indian Apple?
His remarks come at a time when India is moving towards its next phase in electronics manufacturing — from assembling smartphones for global companies to developing products under Indian brands, with domestic design capabilities and intellectual property (IP). Vaishnaw pointed out that a mobile phone requires radio frequency communication, antennas, computing capabilities, memory, passive components, camera modules, displays and power management systems. Manufacturers must also manage the device’s weight and power consumption. “For a mobile phone, you have to have radio frequency communication. You have the antenna. India has made significant progress in smartphone manufacturing, but developing a globally competitive brand requires more than setting up factories. It also involves designing the underlying hardware, developing intellectual property and building the expertise to integrate multiple components into a finished product.
Responding to a question from NDTV CEO and Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal on why India does not have a homegrown rival to Apple or Samsung, Vaishnaw said the country was developing the capabilities needed to design its own smartphones. You have compute, you have memory, you have all the passive component,” he said. “That’s why it’s extremely complex to design a mobile phone,” the minister added.
