According to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), 12.41 million phones were manufactured/assembled in local plants during the first five months of 2022, as compared to 0.94 million imported commercially. In May alone, 2.69 million mobile phone handsets were manufactured/assembled, representing an 88 percent increase from the 13.05 million handsets manufactured/assembled in 2020.
Overall, the commercial import of mobile phone handsets decreased from 2020 to 2021. According to the PTA’s official data, 10.26 million mobile phone handsets were imported in 2021, compared to 24.51 million in 2020. This decrease can be attributed to the increase in locally manufactured/assembled mobile phone handsets. In 2021, 12.41 million mobile phone handsets were manufactured/assembled locally, which includes 6.99 million 2G and 5.42 million smartphones. In addition, 53 percent of mobile devices are smartphones, and 47 percent are 2G on the Pakistan network.
Pakistan imported mobile phones worth $1.946 billion during the first eleven months of 2021-22, despite an increase in local production. This is according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), which noted a growth of 4.62 percent from the same period last year.
According to PBS data, the import of mobile phones into Pakistan saw a month-on-month decrease of 35.54 percent in May 2022, coming in at $137.213 million as compared to $212.881 million in April 2022. On a year-on-year basis, mobile phones saw a negative growth of 21.82 percent when compared to $175.501 million in May 2021.
