Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has set October 2028 as the date by which India will have mobile phones that are designed, manufactured and branded in the country. Speaking at the NDTV World Summit in Delhi, he asked the audience to remember the date: October 23, 2028. He called it India's own "Apple and Samsung moment" in smartphones.
The remark was a reply to a question on why India has no homegrown equivalent of Apple or Samsung.
Why phone design is hard
Vaishnaw said designing a phone is extremely complex because so much has to fit into a small space. He listed radio-frequency communication, the antenna, compute, memory, passive components, the camera module, the display and power management, all of which must be balanced against weight and battery use.
How the effort began
He said the government set a challenge to Indian designers about three years ago: design the printed circuit board, the motherboard of a mobile phone. One Indian company's design was selected by a major US telecom service provider, and a 5G-plus phone was designed, manufactured and delivered to customers in the US. Vaishnaw noted that US buyers typically get a 12-month service contract with the handset, so the carrier had committed in advance.
The company and the US carrier were not named.
Keeping the IP at home
The capability built over roughly three and a half years will now go into an Indian-branded phone, Vaishnaw said. He said the aim is to retain the Indian brand, design and IP in India, and that the phone would be one of the largest-selling.
What remains unclear
Vaishnaw did not name the brand, price or specifications. Detailed policy support and named industry partners have also not yet been announced. It is also unclear how much of the phone's components would be made in India, as opposed to designed or assembled there.
A timeline that has moved
Vaishnaw made a similar promise earlier this year. At Davos in January, he said India's own mobile phone brands should arrive "maybe another one year from now, or maybe max 18 months from now." The October 2028 date is the first specific deadline he has given.
