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Samsung wants to strengthen its presence in our smartphone assembly market:South Korea’s Samsung Electronics plans to establish a new factory for smartphone assembly in its industrial complex in Beni Suef, the Communications Ministry said in a statement Friday. The smartphone maker is set to begin establishing the new 6k sqmplant in 4Q 2023, which will produce phones for the local market and for export, and will create some 1.4k direct and indirect jobs, the statement reads. This came during a meeting between Communications Minister Amr Talaat and the head of Samsung Electronics Egypt.
What we don’t know: Information about the size of investment, the production capacity of the factory or which models will be assembled. It’s also not clear how many of the phones will be exported or whether Samsung has committed to using a certain percentage of local components for production.
Current operations:Opened in 2014, Samsung’s USD 270 mn factory in Beni Suef produces smartphones, TVs and tablets, and last year debuted its first batch of Egypt-made smartphones. The facility currently has an annual production capacity of 6 mn units, around 85% of which is exported to the Middle East and Africa.
Samsung isn’t the only multinational looking to increase its footprint in Egypt: Chinese firm Xiaomi is planning to establish a EGP 1 bn phone factory in Egypt which could open in the second half of this year, while fellow Chinese manufacturers Oppo and Vivo have also said they are interested in the market. Meanwhile, Nokia phone manufacturer HMD Global plans to significantly increase its production capacity in Egypt this year and start exporting phones to North Africa.
All part of the industry’s localization strategy: The Communications Ministry has been working over the past several years to localize the country’s electronics manufacturing industry, through ITIDA’s Egypt Makes Electronics initiative, which President Abdel Fattah El Sisi launched at the end of 2015. The initiative is aimed at reducing Egypt’s imports of electronic components and increasing exports, and initially targeted products such as mobile phones, tablets, TVs, smart meters, and solar energy systems.
