Mobile Manufacturing Giant - Elcoteq comes to India

Business World reports about the entry of the 2-billion Finland-based Elcoteq, the world's third-largest supplier of handsets to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Director (business development & marketing) Henry Gilchrist has been to India 24 times in the last three years. In the last 10 months he has spent 50 per cent of the time here. As Gilchrist puts it, "I have spent more time with India than with my family."

Last year 16 million handset were sold and expected to double this year but none of the mobile handsets were manufactured in India. Motorola & Flextronics had shown some interest in the past but were put off by the indian red tapes. In india telecom operators like Reliance Infocomm and Tatas are very bullish with telecom roll out & implementations and the network is growing very fast. India is already home largest base to the FWP (Fixed Wireless Phones) installations. LG is giving tough competition to Nokia in number of handset sold & growth rate by dominating in the CDMA handset market with its association with Reliance Infocomm.

China right now is the world leader in manufacturing handset, if not beat can atleast india join the race?