Smartphone maker Xiaomi on Monday said that it will manufacture one phone per second with the commencement of operations of second plant recently.
According to the company, the second plant enables it to manufacture 95 per cent of its handsets in India.
Meanwhile, the company also launched its latest smartphone at an affordable price -- Redmi 4A – priced at ₹5,999, which will be available through mi.com and Amazon from Thursday.
The latest smartphone boasts of a high capacity battery (3120mAh), powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor, and a 13MP camera.
“With the new manufacturing plant, more than 95 per cent of Xiaomi’s smartphones sold in India are now manufactured in India. Xiaomi will now have a combined production capacity of one phone per second during operational hours,” Manu Jain, Vice President and Managing Director, Xiaomi India, told BusinessLine .
The second manufacturing unit is in partnership with Foxconn at Sri City, Andhra Pradesh. Xiaomi had entered India in July 2014 and the first plant went live in August 2015 and by March last year, over 75 per cent of its phones were being manufactured in India.
“With the second manufacturing plant running, we are extending Xiaomi’s commitment to being in India for the long haul and are generating more jobs in the country,” Jain said in a telephonic interview.
He said the plant has also helped create employment for more than 5,000 people from over 100 surrounding villages and more than 90 per cent of the workforce employed are women.
Speaking about the latest handset, Jain said: “Each one of our Redmi devices has raised the bar of what smartphones can do and completely changed the game in each of their respective price segments.”
It has been designed for full compatibility with India’s LTE cellular networks, including support for LTE Band 5 used for Voice over LTE, the company added.