Advertisment

LG to produce 20 mn handsets by 2010

author-image
CIOL Bureau
Updated On
New Update

HYDERABAD: LG Electronics India Pvt. Ltd, (LGEIL) today announced that its GSM mobile handset manufacturing plant in Pune would produce 20 million handsets by 2010.



Half of these 20 million handsets would be exported while the rest is for domestic consumption.



LG's manufacturing plant currently consists of an assembling unit. The company is inviting component manufacturers from across the world to set up ancillary industries.



H S Bhatia, product group head - national, GSM Mobile phones, LGEIL, said, “We are inviting component makers from Korea, and other places and within the next three to four months we will start real production of handsets.”



Bhatia also projected that by the end of financial year 2005-06, the company would be producing three lakh handsets. It is presently assembling around 50,000 handsets and is exporting to Bangladesh, SriLanka, and Nepal.



LG is also exploring markets in MiddleEast, Africa, etc for business development.



According to Bhatia, LG has so far invested $35 million of which $5 million was earmarked for R&D where as the rest was allocated for setting up the plant.

“We intend to make the Indian development center as the R&D software hub. The 300-odd professionals are contributing to the global product development,” said Bhatia.



He further informed that in 2005, 52 per cent of the mobiles were black and white handsets and the same is expected to dwindle down to 35 per cent in 2006.

“We don't have any black and white handsets and so the addressable market is the 48 per cent color handsets, where we presently have four per cent market share,” Bhatia added.



Earlier, LGEIL launched a promotional scheme offering a set of amplifier speakers free for customers with its new model of G1800 handset priced at Rs 5,990. While G1800 is titled Music Phone, the same offer is available for G200, which is priced at Rs 5,490, called the FM Music Phone.

tech-news