Google Begins Production Of Pixel 8 Smartphones In India

Big tech major Google has kicked off the production of its flagship Pixel 8 smartphone in India.

In a post on X on Monday (August 12), Google India said, “Excited to announce that the first of our Made in India Google #Pixel8 devices have started rolling off the production lines”.

This comes ahead of the ‘Made by Google’ event on Tuesday (August 13) in the US, during which the company is slated to launch the latest Pixel 9 smartphone series. 

The rollout of the first smartphone comes nearly a year after the big tech major said in October last year that it would locally manufacture the Pixel smartphones. In May this year, reports surfaced that the big tech major had tied up with homegrown electronics manufacturer Dixon Technologies to manufacture the Pixel 8 smartphone in the country. 

At the time, it was reported that the first batch of these Made-in-India Pixel 8 phones would hit the shelves by September 2024. Dixon will reportedly manufacture 1 Lakh units of Pixel 8 per month, of which 25-30% units will likely be exported. 

Meanwhile, Google said that its move to produce Pixel 8 smartphones in India will enable it to bring a better “experience” to people across the country. 

It will also help Google gain a larger pie of the Indian premium smartphone segment as making phones in India will enable it to skip the 22% import duty. This, in turn, will help it offer competitive pricing to customers in the INR 50,000-plus bracket, which is currently dominated by Apple and Samsung.

Additionally, production in India is also expected to help the company cut its dependence on China amid the ongoing geopolitical tensions between Washington DC and Beijing. On top of that, moving production to India will help the company avail production-linked incentives (PLIs). 

The development comes at a time when Google’s competitor Apple has aggressively scaled up the production of iPhones in the country via its vendors Foxconn and Tata Electronics. Apple manufactured about $14 Bn worth of iPhones in the country in the financial year 2023-24 (FY24). 

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