Pakistan’s mobile phone manufacturing industry has seen significant growth in 2024, with nearly 19 million mobile handsets produced in the first seven months of the year. From January to July 2024, local manufacturing and assembly plants produced 18.95 million mobile phones, in stark contrast to just one million units imported commercially during the same period. In July alone, 1.61 million mobile phones were produced locally, while only 160,000 units were imported.
Among the locally produced handsets, 6.85 million were 2G models, and 12.1 million were smartphones. According to data from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), smartphones now make up 62 percent of mobile devices on Pakistan’s network, with 38 percent being 2G phones.
In terms of imports, Pakistan brought in mobile phones worth $64.504 million in July 2024, marking a 5.30 percent decrease compared to $68.113 million in July 2023. In local currency, imports stood at Rs. 17.957 billion in July 2024, reflecting a 6.18 percent decline from Rs. 19.140 billion in the same month of 2023.
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On a month-on-month basis, mobile phone imports saw a sharp drop of 76.84 percent in July 2024, falling to $64.504 million from $278.574 million in June 2024, as per data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). Overall, the country’s telecom imports totaled $102.587 million in July 2024, showing a 13.25 percent increase compared to $90.588 million in July 2023.
For the fiscal year 2023-24, Pakistan’s mobile phone imports reached $1.898 billion, a substantial 233 percent increase compared to $570.071 million in the previous fiscal year of 2022-23.
