The Advent of Phone Assembling of Major Smartphone Brands in Pakistan

In Pakistan, smartphone penetration has reached uncharted levels in the last few years particularly after 4G LTE came into the country. The rising trend and huge user base because of the large population has attracted the major smartphone companies to target the Pakistani market. It is evident by the proliferation of new smartphone brands in Pakistan. Phoneworld has been scrutinizing all of these trends and collected some data regarding the initiation of phone assembling in Pakistan or the import of Semi Knocked Down (SKD) devices in Pakistan.

The Advent of Phone Assembling of Major Smartphone Brands in Pakistan

Before July of 2020, all of the smartphones imported in Pakistan came as CBUs (Completely Built Units). But as the smartphone penetration continued at a bolstering pace, a number of companies started to change their strategy and established assembly plants in the country. Afterward, they started to import SKDs instead of the CBUs.

From July 2020 onwards, the smartphone brands started to import SKDs, and the first international company to do that was Infinix. The company sent a batch of 15000 SKDs in July 2020. Afterward, other companies followed the suit and began to establish assembly plants in Pakistan.

Tecno was the second company that started importing SKDs in the country from August 2020 onwards, by sending an initial batch of 9600 units. Then iTel followed the trajectory and began to import SKDs from October 2020 onwards. Vivo started to send SKDs from January 2021 and sent 6100 devices on the first import. Finally, Oppo joined the race in May 2021 and send 15000 SKDs for assembling in Pakistan.

The total number of SKDs sent by different international companies till today are as follows:

Company	Number of SKDs
Infinix	2,088,542
Tecno	1,314,953
Vivo	800,100
iTel	481,460
Oppo	15,000

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