“India market is important for us for several reasons… we do understand that ‘made in India’ is important in the Indian market. That’s why many of our Galaxy products are produced locally,” Mincheol Lee, vice president at Samsung Electronics, told ET. “Just like we did for other markets, if we can see sufficient volume and scale of this business in the India market, we will definitely consider the possibility of producing laptops locally.”
Lee said Samsung global will work closely with its Indian operations to increase sales of its laptops and reach the scale to consider local production.
India had launched a production-linked incentive scheme for IT hardware in April 2022 which did not find too many takers. Hardware manufacturers have blamed the low incentive structure of the scheme for its failure, as the median incentive rate of 2.5% does not justify relocating units from China or Vietnam for hardware products.
The government is now planning to sweeten the scheme, and is considering increasing the scheme’s financial outlay by 2.5 times to about Rs 19,000 crore and doubling the incentive rates to woo multinational companies such as Dell, HP, Apple, Samsung and Asus to step up manufacturing in the country.
Samsung re-entered the laptop market in 2020 and expanded into 21 countries including India in 2021. The company is aiming to corner a double-digit market share in India with the help of laptops targeted at students, enterprises and consumers seeking flagship experience.
In India, Samsung competes with the likes of Apple, HP, Lenovo, Dell and Acer. “The demand for premium features and PC devices is increasing and the Indian market is also well known for its higher aspiration for premium products,” said Lee.
