Country produces 1.21m cellphones in Jan-Feb.

With a significant drop in cellphone smuggling, Pakistan's mobile phone assembly segment grew by leaps and bounds and produced 1.21 million mobile phones in just two months (January and February) of 2021.

The output was significantly higher than just 119,639 mobile phones assembled in the entire 2019.

According to a statement issued by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Wednesday, the implementation of Device Identification, Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS) in 2019 led to a notable increase in legal imports of mobile devices.

It also helped to establish over 33 assembly plants of mobile devices in Pakistan, it said.

'These plants have produced over 25 million mobile devices including 4G smartphones after the introduction of DIRBS,' the PTA revealed. 'Following successful execution of the system, the local assembly segment evolved from infancy to maturity stage with a significant growth in local assembly of smartphones.'

In light of the tremendous impact of DIRBS, the government introduced a comprehensive mobile manufacturing policy to attract international manufacturers to set up their plants in the country.

PTA highlighted that it recently issued the Mobile Device...