India will roll out a fully Indian-designed, Indian-manufactured domestic smartphone brand by 23 October 2028, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced at the NDTV World Summit 2026 on Friday (23 October). “This is 23 October 2026. Please note it: 23 October 2028. You will have Indian-designed, Indian-manufactured, Indian-branded mobile phones,” he said, framing it as the country’s “Apple and Samsung moment” in the smartphone industry. The announcement came at the summit in New Delhi, where Vaishnaw gave the deadline to the day.
The deadline for Indian smartphones
The date is exact: 23 October 2028, two years to the day from the announcement. The promise covers the full stack. Fully Indian-designed means the engineering happens in India. Fully Indian-manufactured means the assembly happens in Indian factories. An Indian brand means the name on the box is owned domestically. Vaishnaw said the milestone builds on India’s electronics manufacturing strides and its expanding semiconductor ecosystem, and the Indian smartphones target is the next step in shifting the country from an assembly hub to a creator of indigenous high-tech consumer products.
The two-year timeline leans on work already under way in electronics manufacturing and semiconductors, which Vaishnaw cited as the foundation.
The “Apple and Samsung moment” line sets the ambition plainly: Indian smartphones the world associates with India, the way it associates Apple with the United States and Samsung with South Korea. Apple and Samsung are the two brands most associated with the modern smartphone, one American and one South Korean, and Vaishnaw’s phrase claims that spot for an Indian brand. The announcement marks a shift from assembling phones to creating them.
India’s current role in the phone industry is largely assembly: putting together handsets designed elsewhere. The 2028 target for Indian smartphones would move the country from assembling other companies’ designs to shipping its own, which is the substance of the “Apple and Samsung moment” claim.
Indian smartphones and the chip roadmap
Vaishnaw tied the phone plan to a semiconductor roadmap. India is working from foundational 28-nanometer fabrication facilities toward advanced 5-nanometer and 3-nanometer nodes by 2035, he said. Fabrication facilities are the factories where chips are etched onto silicon wafers, and moving to smaller nodes means fitting more transistors into the same space. In chipmaking, the nanometer figure measures transistor size, and smaller numbers mean more advanced chips: moving from 28-nanometer fabrication to 5-nanometer and 3-nanometer nodes would take India from entry-level chipmaking to the leading edge. The first made-in-India chip is also expected by 2028, PTI reported, putting Indian smartphones and Indian silicon on the same timeline. A domestically designed phone needs a domestically made chip behind it, and both are now dated to the same year.
Incentives behind Indian smartphones
The government has introduced an incentive scheme to boost mobile phone production and encourage the development of locally designed and manufactured brands, the seedbed for Indian smartphones. Incentive schemes of this kind offer financial support to manufacturers that build locally, and the one Vaishnaw cited is meant to pull both production and design into the country. The scheme is aimed at manufacturers willing to design as well as assemble in India, rewarding local brands rather than just local factories. Vaishnaw blamed the Congress regime for ignoring manufacturing for several decades. Congress led the central government for most of the decades after independence, and Vaishnaw’s charge is that those decades left manufacturing behind.
The plan has three dated parts: Indian-designed, Indian-manufactured, Indian-branded phones by 23 October 2028; the first made-in-India chip by 2028; and 5-nanometer and 3-nanometer chip nodes by 2035. Between now and 2028, the markers to watch are the incentive scheme’s uptake, the first made-in-India chip, and the emergence of the domestic brand itself. If the government meets its own date, the phones will reach buyers exactly two years after the announcement, and the date gives the industry a fixed point to measure progress against. The deadline is now on the record: 23 October 2028, the day Indian smartphones are supposed to arrive.