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Samsung plans to ship more phones from India under a new bonus scheme

Version 1 of 1 saved 23 Oct 2026, 1:34 pm IST · Chain line 172

As it was first published

Samsung plans to ship more phones from India under a new bonus scheme

Samsung exported about $2.6 billion of phones from India in five months. A new government scheme pays makers extra when their sales keep growing.

By Manpreet Kaur

Picture a phone being put together in a big factory in Noida, near Delhi. Now picture that same phone in a box, on a ship, heading to a buyer in another country. Samsung wants a lot more of its phones to take that trip.

On 23 October 2026, The Economic Times reported that Samsung plans to increase its exports of mobile phones from India. The report says this is based on people aware of the matter, and that Samsung did not reply to the newspaper's email. The reason given is a new government plan that pays phone makers a little extra money when they make and sell more phones.

First, what is an export?

An export is something made in one country and sold to buyers in another country. If a samosa stall in Delhi sells samosas to a shop in Dubai, those samosas are exports. Exports bring money from abroad into India, and they keep factories here busy.

Phones are now a very big export for India. India's smartphone exports likely touched a record of about $30 billion in 2025, according to industry estimates reported by IANS. That was 47% more than the $20.45 billion of the year before. The government says smartphones became the single largest exported product from India in 2025, ahead of things like diesel and cut diamonds.

The new scheme, explained like pocket money

Think of a parent who says: "If your marks go up compared with last year, you get a little extra pocket money." The government's new plan works in a similar way.

It is called the Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme. The government approved it with a total budget of Rs 62,500 crore, and it runs for five years, from 2026-27 to 2030-31. A company that makes phones in India gets money back on its eligible sales, at rates from 2.25% to 5%. It can get up to 1.5% more if it buys key parts from makers in India.

A word you will hear often here is "incentive". An incentive is a reward that pushes you to do something. Here, the reward pushes companies to make more phones in India.

Four steps: make phones in India, sell more than in 2025-26, the government checks the extra sales, get 2.25% to 5% back
How the new phone bonus works, in four simple steps.

The catch: you must grow every year

The bonus is not free. According to the ET report, an existing brand must grow its yearly sales by at least Rs 5,000 crore in each year of the scheme, compared with the 2025-26 level.

So, for Samsung to get the bonus in 2026-27, its sales must be Rs 5,000 crore higher than in 2025-26. For 2027-28, the jump must be at least Rs 10,000 crore over that same base year. By the last year, 2030-31, it must be Rs 25,000 crore. It is like a cricket team that must beat its own score by a bigger margin every season.

The scheme does not say "export more" in plain words. But ET reports it is framed in a way that exporting more brings higher bonuses.

A number counting up to Rs 25,000 crore, with five bars rising, showing the extra sales Samsung needs by 2030-31
The extra yearly sales needed rise from Rs 5,000 crore to Rs 25,000 crore by 2030-31.

What Samsung's numbers already show

The early numbers seem to fit the plan. In the first five months of this financial year, April to August 2026, Samsung exported phones worth about $2.6 billion from India, ET reports.

Compare that with the past. Samsung's best year was 2024-25, with exports of $4.4 billion. In 2025-26, exports dropped to around $4 billion. That was the year Samsung was not part of the older phone scheme, because its five-year turn in that scheme had ended.

Here is a quick sum. $2.6 billion in five months is about $0.52 billion a month. If that speed held for all twelve months, the year would end near $6.2 billion. That would beat the $4.4 billion record. ET also says the company could post its best ever exports from India this year, going by these numbers.

Before and after panels: about $4 billion of exports in all of 2025-26, and about $2.6 billion in just April to August 2026
Five months of 2026 already add up to more than half of last full year.

Since 2020-21, when India started its first big phone scheme, Samsung has exported about $21.2 billion of phones from India, as per industry data quoted by ET.

Samsung versus Apple, in one line

Apple sends more than 70% of the phones it makes in India to other countries. Samsung sends only about 40% to 50% abroad, says ET. So Samsung has a lot of room to grow its exports.

Apple's iPhones made up roughly 75% of India's smartphone exports from 2021 to 2025, IANS reported.

The Noida factory and the Vietnam question

Samsung's Noida factory is not new. It was set up in 1996. In 2018, Samsung opened a big new part of it and called it the world's largest mobile factory. The plan then was to double yearly capacity in Noida from 68 million phones to 120 million phones by 2020. Samsung also said at the time that it wanted to make India an export base for phones.

But Samsung's main global centre for making and exporting phones is Vietnam, where it has a well-built network of parts makers. ET's sources say Samsung may move some production from countries like Vietnam to India to use the new scheme. They also say Samsung could think about fresh investment in India.

There is a twist. Memory chips, the parts that store your photos and apps, have become costly. If the world phone market keeps shrinking because of this, Samsung could move production to whichever country gives the best value, an industry executive told ET.

What does India hope to get?

The government expects the scheme to help phone production in India reach about Rs 39 lakh crore in total over five years, with a big rise in exports and around 60,000 new direct work positions.

There is also "value addition". This means how much of a phone's worth is actually created in India. If a phone is worth Rs 100 and India adds only Rs 24 of it, the rest comes from parts bought abroad. ET reports the government wants this share to rise from 24% now to 40% to 45% by the end of the scheme.

Companies can apply from 15 October 2026, and the window stays open until 31 March 2029, according to the same report.

Watch: the scheme in a few minutes

Watch on YouTube

Why should a student care?

The phone in your pocket may have been made in India. More exports can mean busier factories in places like Noida, more parts makers, and more work for young people who build and pack phones. For now, Samsung has not spoken about its plan. The numbers to watch are its monthly exports through the rest of this financial year.

Sources