Samsung India puts Noida on top with world's largest mobile factory

Noida In front are open fields with grazing cattle to the left are underconstruction residential societies and to the right is its existing facilty this where Samsung has set up what is the worlds largest mobile factory Not China or South Korea and certainly not the US the tag of housing the worlds largest mobile factory has straight away put Noida on top of the world manufacturing map when it comes to consumer electronicsThe new 35acre Samsung Electronics facility at Sector 81 in Noida Uttar Pradesh will see Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South Korean President Moon Jaein landing together at a quicklyprepared helipad adjacent to the factory to officially inaugurate it on MondayOne of the first electronics manufacturing facilities set up in the country in the early 1990s the plant started by manufacturing TVs in 1997 The current mobile phone manufacturing unit was added in 2005In June last year the South Korean giant announced a Rs 4915 crore investment to expand the Noida plant and after a year the new facility is ready to double productionThe company is currently making 67 million smartphones in India and with the new plant being functional it is expected to manufacture nearly 120 million mobile phonesNot just mobiles the expansion of the current facility will double Samsungs production capacity of consumer electronics like refrigerators and flat panel televisions further consolidating the companys leadership in these segmentsAccording to Tarun Pathak Associate Director at Counterpoint Research the new facility gives Samsung an advantage by reducing the time to marketThis will help Samsung bring some local features to the devices powered by RampD here Apart from this the company can also bring in export opportunity for Samsung to SAARC and other regions Pathak told IANSSamsung has two manufacturing plants in Noida and in Sriperumbudur Tamil Nadu five RampD centres and one design centre in Noida employing over 70000 people and expanding its network to over 15 lakh retail outletsEstablished in 1995 Samsung India laid the foundation stone of Noida plant next year In 1997 production commenced and the first television was rolled out In 2003 refrigerator production beganBy 2005 Samsung had become market leader in panel TVs and in 2007 the existing Noida facility started manufacturing mobile phonesIn 2012 Samsung became the leader in mobile phones in the country and the Noida facility rolled out the firstever Galaxy S3 device Today Samsung is the market leader across mobile segmentsThe company currently has over 10 per cent of its overall production in India and aims to take it to 50 per cent over the next three yearsFor Samsung India is among the top five smartphone markets globally The US is saturated and Korea and Brazil are not growing significantly India is a big opportunity across price segments including 2G feature phones It makes sense for Samsung to build a bigger manufacturing base here Jaipal Singh Senior Market Analyst IDC told IANSThey are now looking at building a complete ecosystem After smartphones they can go into building topoftheline products in other categories like TVs refrigerators as advance manufacturing in India still lags behind With the new facility Samsung is going to have an edge over its rivals Singh notedAccording to HC Hong President and CEO Samsung India a bigger manufacturing plant will help them cater to the growing demand for Samsung products across the countrySamsung India that registered 27 per cent growth in mobile business revenue for the financial year 201617 accounting for a whopping Rs 34300 crore of its reported Rs 50000 crore sales wont be able to hide the smile when the new facility kicks off production from July 9