KARACHI: Air Link Communication is planning to incorporate a wholly owned subsidiary, Select Technologies (Pvt) Ltd, to take on additional mobile manufacturing of specific brands with an investment of Rs.500 million.

For this purpose, Air Link Communication is increasing share capital of the company from Rs.4.0 billion dividends into 400 million shares Rs.10 each to Rs.6.0 billion. This increase in share will be in respect to the existing ordinary shares of the company.

Air link, a leading distributor of mobile phones with service centers across Pakistan, is an importer-distributor of Huawei and Samsung mobile phones and accessories in Pakistan with around 20 to 25 per cent market share of the total mobile business, according to the Customs Import Data.

The company went public this year and raised record Rs6.43 billion through an Initial Public Offering (IPO) at Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX).

Last month, it announced that it entered into an ‘Apple-authorized reseller’ agreement with the Apple South Asia Pte limited whereby the company has been authorized to resell Apple-authorized products in Pakistan.

The company stands as one of the largest distributors of smartphones in the country and after the announcement of new mobile policy has set up manufacturing facility where they are manufacturing smartphones of the Transsion Group China.

Airlink has set up state-of-the-art smartphone assembly plant in Lahore having a maximum production capacity of 6.0 million units per annum for smart phones and feature phones.

Adviser to Prime Minister on Commerce and Investment Abdul Razak Dawood voiced hope that mobile phone exports will surpass the target of $1 billion owing to incentives given by the government during current fiscal year 2021-22. He was talking to members of the Pakistan Mobile Phone Manufacturers Association the other day. According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Commerce, the aim of the meeting was to discuss export opportunities available to the local manufacturers and assemblers of mobile phones.

The first consignment of 5,500 mobile sets of 4G smartphones manufactured by Inovi Telecom was exported to the UAE in August. Inovi Telecom Pvt Ltd was issued authorisation for mobile device manufacturing in April and it has managed to fulfill its first export order within four months. Transsion Tecno Electronics is also another local player in mobile manufacturing.

Presently, local players are only manufacturing low-end sets with the mass market of Gulf countries being their primary target, while the ordinary citizens of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan too preferred mobile sets up to $100 each.

According to Ministry of IT and Telecom, local manufacturers would eventually start moving towards assembling of high-end phones too after the production of spare parts for mobile sets commence next year.