Why can't India manufacture smart phones like China?

Do you recognize this machine/company?

ASML machine

Now a question: What’s the most important component of a smartphone? 

Yes, that’s correct. The CHIP.

    This is the single most important component in a smartphone and our Indian tech is outdated by at least 25 years.

    We are yet to make the perfect silicon ingot from which wafers are made. Then patterns (actual chip design) are made on wafers using light and tech is known as lithography.

    Now ASML is a world leader in this and owns around 85% world's share in this. They literally rule the market. The first picture at the start of the answer what you saw is of the same litho machine ASML makes. Intel, Qualcomm, TSMC, Samsung, and all other chip-making companies buy machine from them year after year. You can’t make “advanced” chips without this machine. Not possible.

        There is more than 90% of chance (actually 100% if iPhone) that your phone’s chip has been made on this machine. Your SD card, pen drive, hard drive contains the memory made on this machine. How many of these machines are there in India? 10? 20? 50? Naah ZERO!

        As far as I know, there is not a single advanced Litho machine bought by the Indian govt. or any Indian company.

        Reason? The cumulative expenses incurred to set up an entire Semiconductor Fabrication Facility will easily exceed 10 billion dollars or the cost of India’s entire order of 36 Rafale jets which will still leave a couple billion dollars lying around.

        On the other hand, China is investing a huge amount of money in it. In the last couple of years itself, they have started 7 such factories. Each with more than 50 of those machines. Imagine how much trouble India has in buying 120 fighter jets and China invested 700 fighter jets worth of money only in buying these machines. (Numbers, I gave is only for perspective. I am not against India’s defense policy)

    Indians globally are contributing to the development of such high-grade tech but not much in India. Our premier institutes need to promote a culture that is driven by innovation and ingenuity. It must be realized that to be Atmanirbhar, a solid manufacturing infrastructure (and not simply assembly of critical parts and components) is the need of the hour.

    Hope a time comes when you would see an Indian brand of smartphones competing with Apple and Samsung :)

From: Manoj Metgud

Joint Web developer, ELESA