Pakistan's local mobile phone manufacturing and assembly fell 12% year on year in June 2026, while handset imports surged 540%, highlighting a sharp divergence between domestic production and incoming devices amid pre-budget buying and the launch of AIRLINK's Apple mono store.
According to the latest data from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, local manufacturers assembled 1.93 million mobile phones during June, compared with 2.19 million units in the corresponding month of 2025. The weakness was also evident on a monthly basis. Domestic production declined 4% from the preceding month, extending the slowdown in the local handset industry. Imports, by contrast, moved sharply higher. Pakistan imported 0.64 million mobile phones in June, more than six times the 0.10 million units recorded in the same month a year earlier. That represented a year-on-year increase of 540%. The number of imported handsets also doubled from the previous month, underscoring the scale of the June increase.
Market analysts attributed the import surge to buying ahead of the federal budget and the launch of AIRLINK's Apple mono store. The contrasting figures left June with an unusual combination: fewer phones were being assembled locally even as the volume of commercially imported handsets increased dramatically. The weakness in domestic assembly was not confined to a single month. Pakistan produced 13.10 million mobile phones locally during the first six months of calendar year 2026, down 8% from 14.24 million units during the corresponding period of 2025. That represents a reduction of 1.14 million handsets from the level assembled during the first half of last year.
June's performance was weaker still. Local output declined by 260,000 units from the 2.19 million phones assembled in June 2025 to 1.93 million this year. At the same time, imported volumes increased by 540,000 units, from 100,000 to 640,000 handsets. The monthly data therefore sharpen a trend already visible in the half-year figures. Local production entered the second half of 2026 below its year-earlier level, while June brought an exceptional increase in imports.
The 4% month-on-month contraction in assembly also suggests that the decline cannot be explained solely by an unusually strong comparison with June 2025. Output was lower than both the previous year and the preceding month.
Imports followed precisely the opposite trajectory, rising strongly on both comparisons. The difference is particularly striking because Pakistan still assembled substantially more phones locally than it imported during June. Domestic plants produced 1.93 million devices, roughly three times the 0.64 million units brought into the country. Yet the direction of travel was reversed: assembly was shrinking while imports were expanding rapidly. For the first half of 2026, the domestic industry's 8% decline provides the broader measure of the slowdown. Production of 13.10 million devices compares with 14.24 million in January-June 2025.
June intensified that weakness, with the annual contraction reaching 12%. The import surge, meanwhile, was attributed by market analysts to specific factors, notably pre-budget purchasing and AIRLINK's Apple mono store launch. The PTA figures thus depict a domestic handset industry losing some production momentum at the same time as imported devices recorded an extraordinary monthly increase. Pakistan still manufactured or assembled far more handsets locally than it imported in June, but the comparison with a year earlier is less reassuring for domestic producers: local assembly fell 12%, while imports increased more than sixfold.