Noida becomes hub for mobile phone makers' offices, R&D centres.

Noida is becoming a hub for smartphone makers to set up their offices and R&D centres, with India turning out to to be a sweet spot for them.

While the city was a home for assembly and manufacturing facilities, a number of mobile makers are now putting up offices along with research and development units in the area.

India, which is the fastest growing smartphone market globally, is expected to overtake the US as the second-largest smartphone market next year, according to a recent Morgan Stanley research report. Another recent report by Assocham and KPMG said India is likely to have a total number of 180 million smartphones by 2019, claiming 13.5% of total global smartphone market.

The country is seeing a robust growth in the smartphone brands entering and setting up operations and manufacturing bases.

Chinese mobile manufacturer Vivo Mobile leased 250, 000 sq ft area in World Trade Centre at Greater Noida, to set up its office, R&D and manufacturing unit in second quarter of this calendar year, according to the US based real estate services firm Colliers International.

Another Chinese smartphone brand Oppo Mobile leased 160,000 sq ft in Noida, while homegrown mobile company Lava, which recently inaugurated its second facility in the region, took up another 100,000 sq ft of office space there, as per the data collated by Colliers.

Lava's corporate office has been established in Noida and all the national operations are being managed from there,' said Sanjeev Agarwal, chief manufacturing officer, Lava International. 'Moreover, the testing team at Lava is based out of the national headquarters.'

While Lava has a repair factory based out of Noida, the company is in process of establishing a R&D facility in the vicinity, he added.

Companies like to remain in the vicinity of other vendors to leverage common component suppliers and economies of scale sometimes, Colliers said in a recent report.

BS