Google announced that it will start manufacturing the Pixel 8 in India. The first units are expected to be available in 2024.
Google is partnering with international and domestic manufacturers to produce the device in India. The company said that India is a priority market for Pixel.
Google launched the Pixel 8 in India and global markets earlier this month. The Pixel 8 has a 6.2-inch Actua display that is 42% brighter than the Pixel 7’s display.
It also features a 12-MP ultrawide camera with autofocus. The Pixel 8 Pro has an upgraded 48-MP ultrawide camera that is more effective in low light.
Google’s Rick Osterloh, Head of Devices & Services, said at the #GoogleForIndia event in New Delhi, “India is a priority market for Pixel”.
“Mobile manufacturing was practically negligible [in India] nine years back,” said India’s IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw at Google’s event. “Our Prime Minister’s vision of Make-in-India and Digital India, the entire thing has gotten translated to real action on the ground, and today we have close to $44 billion in mobile manufacturing and exports of mobile phones is at $11 billion. It’s generating huge employment. So I think what Google has announced today is good for Google and good for India.”
Google is the latest tech entrant to make a push to turn India into a manufacturing hub. Apple, whose manufacturing partners began locally assembling iPhones a few years ago, now manufactures the newest models in the country.
New Delhi is actively offering financial incentives worth billions of dollars to attract global companies to establish manufacturing operations in India. The incentives come at a time when many firms — including Apple — are looking to cut their reliance on China for manufacturing their devices in what analysts often call “China + 1” strategy.
“With India’s growing domestic demand, and government’s focus on local manufacturing including policy support (lower taxes, production linked incentive scheme etc) and export opportunity driven by China + 1 strategy of global players, India’s EMS industry (finished product and electronics manufacturing) is at the cusp of robust medium- term growth,” Macquarie analysts wrote in a recent note, accessed via S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Google said India is also a priority market for Pixel smartphones and the company is increasingly improving its devices’ customer service experience in the country. Google’s partner F1 Info Solutions has enabled the firm to have 28 service centers across 27 cities in India, Osterloh said.
“From the very onset of our hardware business, we committed to building and investing for the long run. This is an early step in a long journey of expanding our device production capacity and helping meet the country’s growing demand for Pixel smartphones,” he said.
