Chinese telecom and networking giant Huawei Technologies will setup manufacturing plants in India, to locally manufacture smartphones in the country, according to an Economic Times report. During launch of Huawei’s latest handset model in India, Peter Zhai, President for Huawei India operations said that the company has procured licenses for manufacturing and will announce plans in a month’s time, as per the report. Zhai added that India is the company’s second largest market opportunity after China and plans to invest aggressively in India. It will also expand offline presence across 50,000 stores by end of this year in India, added the report. The company cleared security to manufacture telecom equipment in India in July last year, about 19 months after the company first applied for a manufacturing license. Huawei already has R&D operations in Tamil Nadu. MediaNama wrote to Huawei asking where the manufacturing plants would be set up and the amount of investment going into the units, we are yet to hear back from them. Shipments: Huawei currently is the third largest smartphone vendor worldwide, and first in China in terms of shipments, according to an IDC report. During Q2 2016, it shipped 32.1 million units worldwide, which is up 8.4% from last year. Huawei’s premium phones including the P9 and Mate 8 model contributed to 25% of the worldwide shipments, added IDC. Although the company’s cheaper line up of phones are meant for price-sensitive markets like India, in saturated markets like US, its primary goal would be to…
