More smartphones than cereals: A story of India’s changing exports

Smartphone exports take off

In the first five months of 2024 India exported nearly $8.4 billion worth of smartphones, pipping cereals as India’s eighth most exported product.

Smartphones are within a touching distance of replacing vehicles as one of India’s top exports.

If one includes related products, it already did so between January and May 2024, with a 33 percent increase in exports from a similar period in 2023.

This is in contrast this with two years ago in 2022, when cereal exports were nearly double that of smartphone sales and vehicle exports were nearly three-times.

A combination of booming production in India from companies like Apple and ban on certain cereal items has switched India’s exports basket.

India’s changing export basket can also be gauged from the fact that electrical machinery and equipment, which includes smartphones, were the second highest exports from the country, after minerals and fuels.

It has already replaced gems and jewellery as India’s most exported non-fuel item in 2024 and is increasingly closing the gap with fuels.

Preliminary data released by the department of commerce notes further gains. In the April-June quarter, for instance, electronic goods were the third highest export item from the country after petroleum and engineering goods.

iPhone push

Apple’s iPhones may be an important component to India’s smartphone export story. In April and May, iPhone exports were over 60 percent of total smartphone exports of $3.3 billion.

In FY24, iPhone exports from the country had doubled to $10 billion from $5 billion the previous fiscal.

In April 2022, smartphone exports accounted for 1.3 percent of total exports, they accounted for 4.3 percent of India’s total exports in 2024.

The share in global exports has also increased over the last four years.

In 2019, smartphone and related product exports from India had a 0.8 percent share of total exports in the category. Last year, the country’s share had jumped to 1.8 percent.