Make In India: Samsung Restarts Smart TV Production With Dixon

Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung, on Friday (January 3), entered into a partnership with the contract-based equipment manufacturer, Dixon Technologies, to restart the manufacturing of smart TV units in India.

According to ET, Samsung will resume television production in India after 15 months. The company had stopped manufacturing in October 2018 as at that time, the government had introduced a 5% import duties on the smart TV panel, one of the biggest components in television manufacturing.

In response to the government’s tax imposition, Samsung had moved to Vietnam for television manufacturing. During this period, the company imported finished television units in India from Vietnam under the Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

However, recently the government has scrapped this import duty on the open cell panels or TV displays, encouraging Samsung to restart manufacturing in India.

Dixon is going to manufacture smart TV units for Samsung at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. Notably, Dixon already manufactures washing machines and mobile phones for Samsung.

In India, the television manufacturing market can be categorised into two segments — premium brands such as Samsung, Sony, LG and more affordable smart TV brands such as Xiaomi, Vu, Micromax, Intex, Motorola, OnePlus and Nokia.

In recent times, consumers are going for the more affordable options thanks to the rich feature set and the smart TV experience on a budget. The rise in sales of cheaper television units had forced Samsung, Sony and LG to drop prices by 20%-40%. And now with the production of its television unit in India, Samsung would be able to cut down the cost involved in shipping them, along with the taxes involved.

Govt Stresses On Make In India

Samsung’s move to exit from the smart TV production space raised serious questions on the Indian government’s Make In India initiative. However, since then, the government has been focusing a lot to increase India’s production capabilities and make it a manufacturing hub.

Recently, media reports have suggested that the government is planning to increase export incentives for smartphone brands manufacturing in the country. Besides Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Vivo and Oppo are some of the smartphone manufacturers in India and the government’s proposition is aimed to encourage these companies to produce more of their phones in the country.