India’s Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), under the Ministry of Finance, has extended and expanded the India smartphone import duty relief that phone makers rely on to build handsets locally. Three customs notifications issued on July 8, 2026, keep key component and machinery exemptions in place until March 31, 2029 — giving every brand assembling phones in India, from Samsung and Xiaomi to Vivo, Oppo and Realme, multi-year certainty on what their inputs will cost.
Just to set expectations up front: this is not a “your next phone gets cheaper” story. The measures are about keeping local manufacturing cost-competitive and slowing how fast prices rise, not cutting them. With global memory (RAM and storage) prices climbing, this duty relief helps offset upward pressure rather than deliver a discount at the till.
What the India smartphone import duty notifications actually change
The three notifications target different parts of the manufacturing chain, and the detail matters because several outlets blurred them together.
Wireless charging components (this one applies to phones)
Notification 26/2026-Customs extends zero customs duty — where a 5% or 7.5% duty previously applied — on the components used to build wireless charging inductor coil modules for mobile phones: nano-crystalline assemblies, E-shields, PET liners, PC shims with Z-liner, main stranded coils, NFC coils and neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets. This is an extension of existing relief, now locked in through March 2029.
Lithium-ion battery machinery
Notification 27/2026-Customs replaces the old eligibility list with an expanded set of 85 capital-goods categories that qualify for concessional duty. It spans mixing, coating, winding, assembly, welding and testing equipment, plus auxiliary systems like dust collection, solvent recovery, heat recovery and effluent treatment used in battery-cell production. Those cells feed smartphones, laptops and EVs alike, so it is not phone-exclusive — but it directly touches battery assembly happening in India.
Display components — note the exclusion
Notification 25/2026-Customs exempts Basic Customs Duty on display cells, Flexible Printed Circuit Assemblies (FPCAs), backlight units, frames and Anisotropic Conductive Film (ACF) — but only for automotive, medical and industrial displays. It explicitly excludes displays for mobile phones, smartwatches, smart meters and LCD/LED TV panels. So despite some reporting, this particular exemption does not help smartphone costs.
Why the government is doing this
According to the notifications, the goal is to lower the import cost of critical components and capital goods, push more domestic value addition, and strengthen India’s footing in electronics, battery manufacturing and electric mobility — the familiar “Make in India” logic of building supply chains that do not snap under global shocks. The scale explains the urgency: India is chasing $500 billion in electronics manufacturing by FY2030, and smartphone production has grown roughly 28-fold in a decade to around $57 billion in FY2024-25.
Apple and Xiaomi have been named most often as beneficiaries, since both keep ramping local output, but the relief is maker-agnostic. Samsung’s Noida plant — one of the world’s largest phone factories — plus Vivo, Oppo, Realme and anyone assembling phones, charging modules or batteries here gains the same certainty. That certainty is what lets an OEM commit to India-specific plans, like Samsung’s Galaxy S27 series running the Exynos 2700 for the India market, without repricing every time a duty schedule lapses.
What it means for buyers
For the person actually buying a phone, the practical effect is subtle: do not expect price tags to fall next quarter. The point is to keep prices from rising too quickly rather than to bring them down, and with memory-chip costs pushing the other way, this relief acts as a brake on future increases rather than a saving you will notice. The clearer win is structural — cheaper inputs and machinery make the case for building in India stronger, which over time supports steadier supply and pricing for the local market.
Sources: India Briefing, Digit.in. Notifications 25, 26 and 27/2026-Customs were issued by CBIC, Ministry of Finance.
