India Smartphone and Mobile Market: Subscribers and Manufacturing

India has one of the world's largest mobile user bases and is now a major phone producer. Wireless (mobile) subscribers rose from 1,236.96 million at the end of November 2025 to 1,244.20 million at the end of December 2025 [2]. Mobile teledensity was 87.38% [2].

The Ministry of Electronics and IT says India is the world's second-largest mobile phone manufacturer by volume, and 99.2% of mobile phones used in India are made in India [1].

In December 2025, urban areas had 712.03 million mobile subscribers and rural areas 532.17 million [2]. Urban mobile teledensity was 139.08% and rural mobile teledensity 58.36% [2]. Private operators held 92.53% of mobile subscribers, and the state-owned BSNL and MTNL held 7.47% [2].

In wireless broadband, Reliance Jio had 500.55 million subscribers, Bharti Airtel 304.21 million, Vodafone Idea 128.46 million and BSNL 28.56 million [2]. India also had 109.19 million M2M cellular connections in December 2025 [2].

The government says electronics manufacturing has grown seven-fold and electronics exports eleven-fold since FY2014-15, mainly because of mobile phones [1]. Smartphones became India's single largest export product category in 2025, ahead of diesel fuel and cut diamonds [1].

ETTelecom, reporting government figures, says mobile phone production rose 146% to reach INR 5.25 lakh crore in FY2024-25 [3].

The Production Linked Incentive Scheme for Large Scale Electronics Manufacturing (PLI-LSEM) helped set up mobile phone production and ended on 31 March 2026 [1]. In August 2026 MeitY notified the Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme (MPMS), with a budget of INR 62,500 crore over FY2026-27 to FY2030-31 [1].

• Target Segment 1 supports mobile phone manufacturing, with incentives of 2.25% to 5% [1]
• Target Segment 2 supports Indian brands at 5%, plus 3% for Indian design and R&D [1]
• Up to 1.5% extra for domestic sourcing of key components [1]

The government expects cumulative mobile phone production of about INR 39 lakh crore and around 60,000 direct jobs over the scheme's life [1].

Subscriber data comes from TRAI's subscription data for December 2025, published through PIB [2]. Manufacturing and policy facts come from the PIB release on the Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme [1]. The FY2024-25 production value comes from ETTelecom's reporting of government figures [3]. Other secondary posts give a different figure (over INR 5.45 lakh crore), so treat this value as indicative. Subscriber counts are connections, not unique users, and include feature phones as well as smartphones. Values are in INR. One lakh crore equals one trillion rupees. Scheme production and job figures are government projections. This edition does not include 5G base station counts or official mobile export values, because they were not verified.