The local manufacturing plants have manufactured/assembled 16.7 million phones and handsets during the first nine months (January-September) of 2022 compared to 1.24 million imported commercially, says Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
The local manufacturing plants manufactured/assembled 1.09 million mobile phone handsets in September 2022.
The manufactured/assembled mobile phones handsets by local manufacturing plants during the calendar year 2021 stood at 24.66 million compared to 13.05 million in 2020, i.e. 88 percent increase.
The commercial imports of mobile phone handsets stood at 10.26 million in 2021 compared to 24.51 million in 2020, revealed the official data of PTA.
The locally manufactured/assembled 16.7 million mobile phones handsets include 9.46 million 2G and 7.24 million smartphones. Further, as per the PTA data, 54 percent of mobile devices are smartphones, and 46 percent are 2G on the Pakistan network.
However, despite the increase in a local production of mobile phones, Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $160.271 million during the first quarter (July-September) of the current fiscal year 2022-23, registering a negative growth of 67.62 percent when compared to $494.960 million during the same period of last year.
Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) data shows that on a month-on-month (MoM) basis mobile phone imports registered 7.38 percent negative growth and stood at $58.407 million in September 2022 when compared to $63.06 million in August 2022.
Mobile phone imports registered 72.06 percent negative growth on a year-on-year (YoY) basis in September 2022 when compared to $209.013 million during the same month of last year.
The successful implementation of the Device Identification Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS) along with conducive government policies including the mobile manufacturing policy has created a favorable environment for mobile device manufacturing in Pakistan.
It has also contributed positively to the mobile ecosystem of Pakistan by eliminating the counterfeit device market providing a level-playing field for commercial entities and has created trust among consumers due to the formulation of standardized legal channels for all sorts of device imports.