Chinese smartphone giants suspend manufacturing in India amid coronavirus lockdown

China’s major Android smartphone vendors, including Xiaomi Corp, Oppo and Vivo, have suspended manufacturing operations in India amid a nationwide lockdown to stop the coronavirus from spreading.

The 21-day lockdown, which started from midnight on Tuesday after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement, is expected to result in a decline this year in India’s smartphone market, the world’s second largest after China, as manufacturers comply with the order and domestic consumption slows down during that period, according to analysts.

Apple’s main iPhone assemblers, Foxconn Technology Group and Wistron Corp, as well as South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have also temporarily shut down their plants in India in line with the government’s directive.

“In the worst-case scenario, the Indian smartphone market could see a 4.2 per cent decline in 2020,” said Nicole Peng, vice-president of mobility advisory services at Canalys.

The projected slowdown in India, where Canalys estimated smartphone shipments to have grown 8 per cent to 148 million units last year, may be a bigger concern for China’s major Android smartphone companies, which are the market’s most popular brands. These companies have already been adversely affected by the sluggish economic growth and weak consumer spending in their home market, owing to China’s protracted trade war with the US and exacerbated by the Covid-19 outbreak.

Global smartphone shipments tumbled 38 per cent to 61.8 million units in February because of the public health crisis, as factories in China were shut down and consumer demand plunged because of the government’s tight travel and transport restrictions, according to data from research firm Strategy Analytics. Smartphone factories in China have slowly restarted operations this month, as the coronavirus crisis eased up.