1. The mobile phone semiconductor chipset market in India is a virtual duopoly, with Qualcomm and MediaTek forming 72% of the market share in 2022.
Chipsets constitute ~15% of a smartphone’s cost... As many as 152 million smartphones were shipped in India in 2022, according to Counterpoint Technology Market Research. Of this, 70 million contained Mediatek’s chipsets and 41 million had Qualcomm’s. Samsung’s Exynos chipset numbers stood at 13 million and Apple’s at 6.8 million, according to a senior executive with one of the chipset companies... Mediatek is inching up on the 5G market share as well. Analysts estimate that almost half of Mediatek shipments will be 5G phones by the end of 2023, bumping up its earnings further. The average selling price of the 4G and 5G chipsets from Mediatek is US$10 and US$20, respectively. For rival Qualcomm, the average selling price of 4G and 5G chipsets would be US$10 and US$25—nearly the same as Mediatek. For the flagship smartphone models, though, Qualcomm may sell at a 10-15% premium... One in two smartphones launched in the quarter ended September 2022 used Mediatek chips, according to market-research firm Techarc. From the time ODMs in Taiwan and China would give the company entry only to mid-level slots and reserve premium phone slots for Qualcomm, Mediatek is today marching lockstep with Qualcomm... In India, Mediatek has been in the trenches—it helped Indian phone makers such as Lava International, Micromax Informatics, and Karbonn Mobiles to launch feature phones and then 4G smartphones.
Mobile phone chipsets contribute 50-60% of revenues of both companies in India. They are now moving to supply chipsets for home broadband modems and set-top-boxes to both Airtel and Jio. Both see the Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) equipment market, where the Indian TSPs plan to cover 100 m households, as a major source of future revenue.
2. Paul Krugman has an excellent post explaining succinctly the reasons for Canada's trade surplus with the US (almost entirely due to the oil exports from Athabasca tar sands to US midwest) and Japan's trade surplus (its ageing population and mature economy means that Japan has few investment opportunities, leading it to export capital, which in turn also means it must run trade surpluses).
3. Useful description about President Trump's political beliefs.
Mr. Trump has never been particularly rooted to one ideology for all that long. He switched political parties five times before first running for president as a Republican in 2016, and at one point or another was for abortion rights, gun control, higher taxes on the rich and the invasion of Iraq before he was against all of them. His most consistent through line going back to his days as a real estate developer in the 1980s has been a conviction that the United States was being cheated by friends and enemies alike, which has informed his views of trade, security and alliances. Otherwise, he has been willing to shift direction if it suits his interests.
4. Despite high profile stories of large US companies ordering employees back to the office, work from home (WFH) continues to remain persistently high.
Stanford University economist, Professor Nick Bloom's... research, which includes monthly surveys of thousands of US workers, shows the share of work they do from home soared from well below 10 per cent before Covid to 61 per cent at the height of the pandemic in 2020, before sinking back to around 30 per cent in 2022. But those levels have stayed remarkably flat since late 2023, never dropping below 26 per cent. You can see a similar pattern in office visit levels... Some of the biggest fans of working from home are smaller, younger, less well known companies that are, as Bloom points out, among the fastest growing firms. Their expansion may be offsetting more noticeable cuts in homeworking at older businesses. Also, the longer hybrid working lasts, the more evident its advantages become for some firms... according to a paper Bloom and colleagues published on the trial last year. “Each quit cost the company approximately $20,000 in recruitment and training, so a one-third reduction in attrition for the firm would generate millions of dollars in savings.”
5. Trajectory of fiscal devolution in India over the last two finance commissions.
The government had imposed a health cess of 5 per cent on imports of certain medical equipment in the 2020-21 Budget. The next year’s Budget imposed the Agriculture Infrastructure and Development Cess (AIDC) on imports of products such as gold, silver, alcoholic beverages, crude edible oils, etc. Besides, cess was also imposed from the excise side at the rate of ₹2.5 per litre on petrol and ₹4 per litre on diesel. That is why devolution to states now constitutes 26 per cent of the states’ own tax revenues, which is much lower than the pre-Covid period, barring 2014-15 and 2017-18.
6. RE in India hits a roadblock.
RE projects of 40 Gigawatts (Gw), tendered by four government-designated Renewable Energy Implementation Agencies (REIAs), have failed to find buyers. A February 5 review meeting of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy revealed that these projects, awarded by RE-tendering agency Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) and state-owned generators NTPC, NHPC, and SJVN, have been pending for over a year because no state government has opted to sign power-sale agreements (PSAs) with the RE generator. The pending tenders amount to just under half the 94 Gw of RE-project bids issued by the four agencies in 2023-24. As a result, the option of pausing new tenders until all PSAs or power-purchase agreements (PPAs) are signed with the REIAs was being considered.
7. Investments by PE and VC firms in India's climate tech sector fell 61% in 2024 to $1.3 bn, mirroring global PE/VC investments which fell 40% to $30.9 bn.
8. India health sector spending facts.
The social sector... share in total Union expenditure declining from 5.3 per cent in 2019-20 to just 3.9 per cent in 2025-26... The Budget allocates ~1.19 trillion to the health sector... The Union Health budget now accounts for 2.4 per cent of the total Union Budget and 0.33 per cent of the projected gross domestic product (GDP), down from 3.59 per cent and 0.56 per cent, respectively, in the 2021-22 Budget... The 11th Five-Year Plan proposed an increase in government health spending to a minimum of 2 per cent of GDP by 2012. The National Health Policy of 2017 recommended further elevating public health spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2025. According to the latest National Health Accounts (2021-22), the Union government accounts for a modest 41.8 per cent of total government healthcare expenditure in India. A rough estimate suggests that the combined healthcare budget of the central and state governments for 2025-26 is approximately 0.79 per cent of the projected GDP... the per-capita Union health budget for 2025-26 is ~844 — 8 per cent lower than the pandemic year—raising concerns about achieving UHC by 2030.
9. A graphical summary of India's trade partners.
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