Motorola’s president (mobile devices) Ron Garriques and chief technology officer are coming down to Chennai to make the big-buck announcement.
NEW DELHI: The long wait is over. US-headquartered telecom major Motorola is finally making its India manufacturing plans public. It is learnt that Motorola’s president (mobile devices) Ron Garriques and IIT-educated chief technology officer Padmasree Warrior are coming down to Chennai to make the big-buck announcement on Wednesday.
Union communications minister Dayanidhi Maran, who has been pushing to make India a manufacturing hub, would be the chief guest on the occasion. Local manufacturing is expected to reduce the cost of handsets and substantially expand the mobile user base.
Even as Motorola officials are tight-lipped about the location of the manufacturing facility, the announcement venue is quite a give away. The plant would be set up close to Chennai, sources said. Among other telecom firms, Nokia has a manufacturing plant at Sriperumbudur (near Chennai) and Ericsson an R&D centre in Chennai.
Motorola, the world’s second-largest cell-phone maker, had India manufacturing plans way back in the mid-90s, but the company set up a plant at Tianjin in China instead, some 12 years ago. In fact, that was China’s first mobile phone manufacturing facility. In Asia, Motorola has manufacturing plants in Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Philippines and South Korea. Now, India will join the list too.
At a press conference in Singapore on Monday, Motorola executive vice-president for integrated supply chain operations Stu Reed said the company would announce a manufacturing presence in India soon.
Motorola’s global handset market share is at 20.1%, second to industry leader Nokia with a 32.8% share, according to a research firm Strategy Analytics.
In India, while Nokia is the market leader with 78.8%, Motorola has a share of only 4.6% in the handset market, according to a research by ORG Gfk.
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