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Pakistan mobile assembly falls 20% in SeptemberTechnology
Local mobile phone assembly fell 20% year-on-year in September to 2.42 million handsets, even as monthly output jumped 46%, new PTA figures show.
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Local mobile phone assembly in Pakistan fell by 20 percent year-on-year in September, despite a sharp monthly recovery, according to the latest figures released by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority on Thursday.
Domestic manufacturers assembled 2.42 million handsets during the month. That was 46 percent higher than the previous month, but still one-fifth lower than the same month last year, showing that the industry is recovering from a weak patch rather than growing outright.
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Over the first nine months of the current year, local assembly fell by 7 percent to 21.08 million units compared with the same period last year. The figures point to a slowdown in overall local production even though monthly output has started to pick up again.
Mobile phone imports also declined sharply, falling 48 percent to just 110,000 units in September. The drop suggests that buyers and sellers are relying far more on locally assembled phones than on imported ones.
Locally assembled handsets met 96 percent of Pakistan’s mobile phone demand in September. Across the first nine months of the year, domestic assembly accounted for 88 percent of total demand, underlining how far local manufacturing has come in supplying the market.
Among manufacturers, VGO TEL led local assembly with 2.5 million units during the reporting period, followed by Infinix with 1.96 million units and itel with 1.59 million units. Other major brands involved in local assembly in Pakistan include Tecno, Samsung, Vivo and Nokia.
The figures highlight the growing role of domestic manufacturing in meeting Pakistan’s mobile phone demand. At the same time, the year-on-year decline indicates a slowdown in overall local assembly during the first nine months of the year, even as the monthly trend turns upward.
Industry watchers say the coming months will show whether the September rebound can be sustained. A continued monthly recovery would help local assemblers close the gap with last year’s output, while a fresh dip would add to concerns about demand and production costs.
The 46 percent month-on-month rise is the strongest signal in the release. It shows that factories lifted output sharply in September after a weaker run, even though the total for the year so far remains behind last year. Whether that rebound holds will determine if the industry can close the gap by the end of the year.
The import figures tell a similar story. With only 110,000 phones imported in September, almost all of the phones sold in the country during the month were assembled locally. That shift has been building for several years as manufacturers set up plants in Pakistan and as import costs rose, and the September data shows it is now firmly in place.
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