Google is planning to make India its production hub for Pixel smartphones and will export them to Europe and the US, according to a report. The company is expected to unveil the Google Pixel 9 series on August 13 in an event. A percentage of these devices that will be made available in Europe will reportedly be made in India. Two different manufacturing firms are said to be handling the production of these devices. It is also said that Google will make a formal announcement regarding the new development in the coming months.
Google to export India-made Pixel phones to the US, Europe
Citing a source familiar with the matter, a Moneycontrol report states that the tech giant has already started trial production of the devices in Tamil Nadu with Foxconn. Notably, Foxconn also manufactures iPhone units for Apple in India.
The publication states that Google is planning to set up India as a key export hub for its Pixel smartphone lineup. These devices will initially be exported to Europe and later they will also fulfil the demand in the US.
The tech giant has reportedly contracted Dixon Technologies' subsidiary Paget Electronics and Taiwan-based Foxconn While the latter is said to handle the standard models, Foxconn will manufacture the 'Pro' models. An announcement from Google regarding this is expected in the second half of the year, as per the report.
It is said that most of the manufactured units will be kept aside for exports as the demand for Pixel smartphones in India is quite low. Local manufacturing will also allow Google to take advantage of the government's production-linked incentive programme (PLI) which offers companies a percentage of their incremental sales back as a cash incentive.
Meanwhile, the tech giant is gearing up to launch the Google Pixel 9 series next month. According to a report, the smartphone series could arrive with new artificial intelligence (AI) features under a new Google AI branding. The speculated new features include screenshot feature which will let Google use AI technology to provide information about the screenshots a user captures, a Best Take feature that adds missing people in group photos, and Studio which appears to be an image generation tool.
