Gadgets
Customs duty hike on mobile phones set to hurt consumers (Second Lead)
New Delhi, Feb 1 (IANS) In a bid to protect domestic smartphone manufacturers, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday hiked customs duty on mobile phones to 20 per cent from 15 per cent — a move that will force foreign players to pass on the burden to consumers.
“Customs duty on import of mobile phone parts will be increased to 20 per cent from the existing 15 per cent. This will boost jobs in the smartphone sector in India,” Jaitley said in his Union Budget speech.
While the intention behind increasing the customs duties on some products such as mobile phones is to incentivise domestic manufacturing, “this will lead to an increase in the prices for these products denting the middle-class consumers wallets”, reacted M.S. Mani, Partner, Deloitte India.
Domestic smartphones welcomed the government’s move.
“We welcome the announcement on custom duty increase in mobile phones. This will help make India a global hub for mobile phone manufacturing. Local manufacturing will create more job opportunities,” said Sanjeev Agarwal, Chief Manufacturing Officer, LAVA International.
Rajeev Jain, Director and CFO, Intex Technologies, said the move will give a big boost for localisation and setting up of a domestic component ecosystem.
“This is a big thumbs up to domestic players like Intex which have been developing domestic capacities since long in electronics manufacturing,” he said.
Chinese smartphone vendors, however, were critical of the government’s move.
“The increase in custom duty will definitely hamper the cost to customer, especially when it comes to getting repairs for the high-end devices,” said Syed Tajuddin, CEO, Coolpad India.
“While increase in custom duty on handsets will compel brands to manufacture or assemble more in India, still there is not great support for local ecosystem for manufacturing spare parts,” he added.
Said Vikas Agarwal, General Manager at OnePlus India: “We are fully committed to the Indian market and welcome the proposed regulations. Currently, all OnePlus smartphones are produced locally and we are already exploring ways to further increase the share of local manufacturing.
“The current move will further enhance the manufacturing sector leading to job creation. We have doubled up our production capacity this financial year and will continue to scale up our manufacturing capacities to meet the growing customer demand,” added Sudhin Mathur, Managing Director, Motorola Mobility India.
According to industry experts, the customs duty hike will push foreign players towards manufacturing and sourcing components more within the country.
“This move will push almost all players to increase the assembling of mobile phones in India. From Apple’s point of view, it will certainly impact in the near term, possibly increase the prices of its flagships since most of them are being imported to India,” Navkendar Singh, Senior Research Manager, IDC India, told IANS.
“In the long term, this will push Apple to start manufacturing of the entire range of devices in India to enjoy these incentives and remain competitive in a market which it cannot afford to ignore,” Singh added.
“Almost 3/5th of total handsets out of 300 million last year were assembled in India. The increase in duty will further increase the local assembling share as brands will ramp up their current output from local Maintenance and Engineering Services (EMS) facilities since capacity is already there,” Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint, told IANS.
According to Faisal Kawoosa, Principal Analyst, Telecoms, CyberMedia Research (CMR), the move is in line with expectations to further give impetus to manufacture the handsets domestically.
“This will also push new entrants, which typically make beeline every year to India for local manufacturing who otherwise first procure completely built units (CBUs) from their parent companies and then gradually start manufacturing in India,” Kawoosa said.
In December, the government had increased customs duty on various items, including mobile phones, to 15 per cent from 10 per cent.
After the government hike, Apple became the first manufacturer to raise prices (on MRP) across iPhone models, except iPhone SE that the company assembles in the country.
–IANS
na/mr
Business
Apple is giving a huge discount on its gadgets: Details inside
If you want to buy an iPhone and were waiting for a nice offer, then we have a piece of good news for you! Amazon Summer Sale May 2022 has begun and they are offering major discounts on various smartphones, laptops, and smart TVs, among others.
The sale is live now on the e-commerce platform with no-cost EMI options and exchange discounts on various products. In addition to this, Amazon has also partnered with several banks including ICICI, Kotak Bank, and RBL so that customers get instant discounts of up to 10% using their cards and EMI transactions.
Customers can easily enjoy this summer sale and get massive discounts on iPhones. They can also compare prices on Flipkart Big Saving Days Sale 2022 before making a purchase.
Amazon Summer Sale May 2022: Discount offer on iPhone 13
Apple’s coveted phone model iPhone 13 in the 128 GB storage model will be available during the Amazon Summer Sale May 2022 for Rs 64,900. The MRP of the phone is Rs 79,900. This means that the customers will be able to enjoy a discount of up to Rs 15,000 on the purchase of the iPhone 13.
If you have an old iPhone in working condition then you will also be eligible to receive another additional discount worth up to Rs 17,000 on the iPhone 13.
Buy at Rs. 64,900 (MRP – Rs. 79,900)
Features of Apple iPhone 13
The iPhone is powered by an A15 Bionic processor with 6 core CPU. Apart from this, it has 16 core neural engines. With the iPhone 13, up to 512 GB of storage will be available. The iPhone 13 has a 6.1-inch Retina XDR display with 1000 nits brightness.
The iPhone 13 has a 12-megapixel dual rear camera setup. This time a new wide-angle camera has been given, whose aperture is f/1.6. With this, there is support for sensor optical stabilisation. Night mode has been made better than before. The second lens is also 12 megapixels ultra-wide and has an aperture of f/2.4.