Chinese-Made Smartphones Being Abandoned, New King Has Emerged
China is starting to be left behind. The position of the Middle Kingdom as a centre for producing advanced electronic devices, from smartphones to laptops, is increasingly shaky.
Global smartphone giants are moving away from China as a manufacturing hub. This is due to the heated geopolitical relations between the United States (US) and China, which bring threats of high tariffs on products imported from Xi Jinping’s superpower.
Seeing this opportunity, India is quickly moving to attract the interest of global smartphone vendors to produce devices in the country. This aligns with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s agenda to boost domestic manufacturing.
India is targeting an expansion of electronic device manufacturing to US$500 billion by 2030, quoted from Reuters, Friday (13/3/2026).
The value of smartphone production in India has exceeded US$60 billion in fiscal year 2024-2025. That figure jumped 28 times compared to the previous decade, according to government data.
Even smartphone exports for the same period surged to nearly US$21.7 billion, or a 127-fold increase from the previous decade. Smartphones are India’s largest export product throughout 2025.
With these facts, it is not excessive to call India the new ‘king’ of smartphones that will replace China’s position.
Apple is one of the smartphone kings most aggressively moving iPhone production facilities from China to India. A Bloomberg report a while ago stated that 55 million iPhones were produced in India throughout 2025. That number rose by about 53% from the previous year, which was ‘only’ 36 million units.
The large production of iPhones in India is equivalent to roughly a quarter of global iPhone production. According to the Bloomberg report, total annual iPhone production is around 220-230 million units.
New Delhi is considering linking new incentives to exports to encourage more globally competitive production, said an Indian official. The incentives are likely to include investments starting from April this year, the official added.
Previously, smartphone industry leaders like Apple and Samsung relied on India’s national production incentive scheme, a programme worth nearly US$21 billion designed to rival China’s factory power. However, that incentive programme ends this month and is planned to be renewed.
The incentive programme helped Apple produce its most expensive and latest iPhone models in India, after previously only producing cheaper models. Trump’s high tariffs on China also drove some production shifts.
India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has held consultations with industry on designing a new incentive scheme, said an industry executive familiar with the discussions.