“Apple faces a roadblock in its quest to open stores in India after the finance minister decided it must comply with tough local sourcing rules, a report said Wednesday, days after a visit by chief executive Tim Cook,” Agence France-Presse reports.
“India will not exempt Apple from regulations stating that foreign single-brand retailers must buy at least 30 percent of their parts locally if they want to open outlets, the Bloomberg report said,” AFP reports. “Apple has no stores in the world’s second-most populous nation, instead selling iPhones through third-party retailers such as Vodafone and Airtel.”
“India is a compelling proposition for the technology giant, with nearly a billion Indians — among a population of 1.2 billion — still not online, especially as sales of the iPhone slow in more saturated markets,” AFP reports. “Yet Apple products are too expensive for the vast majority of Indians, with taxes taking the cost of a basic iPhone to almost $600.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Again, the Indian people should realize that their government isn’t helping them by blocking affordable Apple Certified Refurbished iPhones, it’s subjecting them to inferior, insecure, derivative fragamndroid crap.
India should approve Apple’s plan to sell Apple Certified refurbished iPhones in India. Not only would they be affordable to more consumers in India, Apple’s refurb’ed iPhones are easily better than competitors’ new phones! Why keep the Indian people shackled to inferior iPhone knockoffs when they could have the real thing?
As for the retail stores, that’ll be worked out eventually.
SEE ALSO:
Apple hits setback in push to open retail stores in India – May 24, 2016
Apple’s U-turn in India: From arrogance to servility – May 23, 2016
Apple finds potential new factory hub – in India – May 23, 2016
Apple’s Tim Cook samples Bollywood, cricket, in bid to woo India – May 21, 2016
India shows Apple CEO Cook the love it’s yet to give the pricey iPhone – May 20, 2016
Apple CEO Cook: ‘We are in India for the next thousand years’ – May 20, 2016
Watch Apple CEO Tim Cook at his first cricket game in India – May 19, 2016
Apple opens Maps development office in Hyderabad, India – May 19, 2016
Apple CEO Cook debuts in India – May 18, 2016
Apple to open first-of-its-kind iOS App Design and Development Accelerator in India – May 18, 2016
Tim Cook visits India: Apple to expand its Indian software development center, build local start-up accelerator program – May 17, 2016
Apple Retail Stores to open in India by end of next year – May 16, 2016
iPhone sales surge 56% in India as Apple eats into Samsung’s high-end share – May 8, 2016
Apple deprivileged as India bows to Washington D.C. consensus on mobile phone import tariffs – May 7, 2016
India rejects Apple’s plan to import and sell refurbished iPhones – May 3, 2016
Indian government panel paves way for wholly-owned Apple retail stores in India – April 28, 2016
Goverment “ministers” in India (as in the US) wind up leaving their jobs with significant assets, shall we say.
Apple, India & China is a giant 3 sided chess game. You have to throw away some pawns, to get the deal (from all sides.)
You can smell it.
The lazy incompetent knows his days at Apple are numbered. And since he can’t innovate or do ANYTHING right, the only thing he has left is to go to India and beg for business, before AAPL drops to 50 bucks!
Smell of desperation..? Gee, you sure reek of it..! :))
Like many 3rd world countries, local officials get to make the rules, even when it hurts the country, Cause… why do they care. They will leave the job with security and money.
The rest of the country be damed. Sadly, we are doing the same in the USA. Working our way down the food chain.
Protectionism should not be thrown around like a perjorative term. The US built a manufacturing base from strong tariffs.
Alexander Hamilton- hardly a raging liberal – was deeply involved in setting up what would today be derided as protectionist policies to wean the US off of British goods and to encourage the development of a domestic manufacturing base. The South remained largely a plantation economy while the North grew a large manufacturing base. By the time of the Civil War the differences between the Northern and Southern economy was stark. Had the South developed a similar diversified economy with a strong industrial base the US would probably be at least 2 countries.
Thanks to our government signing all these so-called free trade deals that put Americans – the most highly productive manufacturing workers in the world- in direct competition with places like Vietnam where children as young as 12 work 12 hour shifts for a little over 50 cents an hour or Malaysia where something closely akin to slavery exists legally. Many of these countries have no occupational safety or environmental rules. Is the cheap Wal-Mart worth the lives of an Asian factory where workers burned to death in a manner similar to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City a century ago?
I have no illusions about how corrupt the Indian government is, but the local content requirement is a legitimate method to encourage the growth of a local economy. We did it in the US along with many other now highly developed economies. It is currently being proposed as necessary again to rebuild our economy.
The US is now incapable of building a Fighter Plane, a Missile, a Submarine or an Aircraft Carrier without Chinese components. California had to buy steel for the new section of the Bay Bridge from China as no US factory could do what dozens could have done a generation ago. Sad, but very true.
Factually inaccurate and economically illiterate is no way to go through life, son.
Stating that the US is no longer capable of building fighters, missiles and submarines without Chinese components is absolutely false. It is a DoD requirement that military hardware of that nature be procured from within the US or one of its allies. That’s not to say that the DoD does not struggle to find suitable manufacturers for many components. They do. But using Chinese hardware?!! Not a chance!
Over and over again it has been empirically proven that protectionist policies hurt the overall economy and artificially distort the playing field with winners and losers being chosen by politics. And yet people continue to believe that it’s done sort of panacea for an aligning economy. Protectionism diverts resources for efficient used to inefficient uses, it burdens the economy with sourcing directives that work against the best interests of individual companies, their shareholders, their employees, and their customers. Protectionism won’t save jobs, it will destroy them, ultimately turning the US into another Venezuela.
First of all I am not your son.
Second, The POTUS personally waived the rules- not the first time- to keep the F-35 on Track.
From Reuters:
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon repeatedly waived laws banning Chinese-built components on U.S. weapons in order to keep the $392 billion Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter program on track in 2012 and 2013, even as U.S. officials were voicing concern about China’s espionage and military buildup.
According to Pentagon documents reviewed by Reuters, chief U.S. arms buyer Frank Kendall allowed two F-35 suppliers, Northrop Grumman Corp and Honeywell International Inc, to use Chinese magnets for the new warplane’s radar system, landing gears and other hardware. Without the waivers, both companies could have faced sanctions for violating federal law and the F-35 program could have faced further delays.”
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/exclusive-u-waived-laws-keep-f-35-track-204531422–sector.html
This is but one example. The waiver has been used repeatedly.
Please get your facts straight before accusing someone of not knowing what they are talking about.
I stand corrected on that particular weapons platform. Very surprising. Nevertheless, I maintain that general protectionism will hurt more workers than it helps.
If it’s okay for other countries, it’s okay for the U.S.A.!
A race to the bottom?
Trump can’t even articulate any policy positions. Every time he speaks it’s 100% bluster and 0% content. Much like peterblood and others here.
Interestingly enough, according to business insider there is only one country that has more protectionist measures than India and I don’t think I have to point that out the citizens of the free and civilized world.
It certainly doesn’t hurt to be cautious, after all look at Iraq and Afghanistan after the most protectionist country invited themselves and their most nefarious export into those countries. They are bottom of the barrel when it comes to the global peace index.
Tim Cook has his work cut out for them and needs to look deeply into that culture to see how it ticks and how it might be incorporated into the new global scheme of things because that is what we are seeing now, the advancement of the globalization process and many governments aren’t going to be the ones advancing humanity at this stage, at least not for a while.
You are getting to be a one trick pony. You apparently hate the USA so much that you won’t even use its name. Are you so monumentally deluded as to think Afghanistan was a lovely peaceful place before 2001? Even when it wasn’t exporting violence to Europe and North America, it was among the most brutal regimes in the world to its own citizens, particularly those poor souls unlucky enough to be born female. I would not have invaded Iraq, but that is hardly the sole cause of the country’s problems today. The typical citizen who was uninterested in governing himself might well have been better off under Saddam Hussain, but ask the Iranians, Kuwaitis, and Kurds just how peaceful Iraq was. I guess the “new global scheme of things” is letting foreigners who can’t run their countries without oppressing their own people dictate to ours.
I’ve been posting at this site for years, way back when Zune Thang was common knowledge to people here. I’ve posted a variety of posts on a variety of topics regarding Apple.
That apparent hate is exactly it, apparent. I don’t hate your country. I’ve been banned from this site for using several names describing your country and have agreed to refrain from such usage with the MDN management. That is the reason I don’t use the name of your country. It has nothing to do with hate, rather a concept known as freedom of expression. People from the free and civilized world have that ability as well, go figure. There is big difference between hating and pointing out those who hate. I’m of the latter, it would be appreciated if you could discern that. I’m not from a country doing the invading and torturing here, you are. It’s a big difference.
There is no delusion with what I said. Afghanistan was not a peaceful place prior to 2001, it was not on the list when the global peace index came to be in 2007 but Iraq was and it was at the barrel (121 out of 121) so it wasn’t a peaceful place either.
Again “look at Iraq and Afghanistan after the most protectionist country invited themselves and their most nefarious export into those countries. They are bottom of the barrel when it comes to the global peace index.”
The result is nothing much has changed, they are still horrible places. The invasion of Iraq has done nothing to improve the peace potential there, in fact it’s probably made it worse depending how you look at it. It kinda puts that “mission accomplished” into perspective, and there are those that do say that they were better off with Saddam Hussein. At least they had a local despot trying to run their country rather than having invading foreigners who put in a puppet government that obviously can’t run their country without oppressing their own people. Of course it’s deja vu for those who remember the first 911.
On a side note, I left you a response to your post from “Panic button: iPhone users need a way to protect their data when the law fails to do so Tuesday, May 17, 2016 · 6:58 pm.” I’ll repeat part of it, just to be clear.
“I have never stated, nor have I ever implied that there is a single citizen from your nation that has been detained at the Guantanamo on the Bay Resort. I have pointed out however, that once a group, a nation in this case learns to dehumanize others they can learn to dehumanize anyone. That should be a red flag of potential warning for those of your country but for the 50 nationalities that were present at Guantanamo it’s a reality.”
Finally, I made a comment about Tim Cook’s challenge to advance humanity. That’s another trick from this pony. I believe in the advancement of humanity.
Now sir, I hope you can put that into perspective because I do appreciate your posts, there are some I have not replied to but over all I enjoy them. I’d much prefer to have civil dialogue between you and I but be aware that I don’t have much respect for a war mongering government that is a bully on the global stage. That is not to say that there are not fine citizens within that country, Tim Cook certainly is one and I believe you to be one as well.
I really hate politics, but why are other countries who practice protectionism are being courted by US companies. Yet in the US this practice is a big poo poo, which then screws up working Americans and our economy.
I said before India is a poor country, and my post was removed from macdailynews.com. I said then, how in the world are those poor people going to be able to buy these overpriced iPhones. It takes Americans, in the richest country in the world, an average of two years to buy one. Now tim cook says, Indians can’t afford a new iPhone, he offers an insult, in my opinion, to sell used iPhones in the country, remanufactured. To me and maybe only to me it sounds like dumping the worlds used iPhones in India, with a tremendous up side for Apple. I wonder why my post was removed when apparently Tim and I have the same concerns.
Every country needs jobs and many of these countries need infrastructure and infrastructural improvements, including the USA. It makes sense for each country to print it’s own money, not a reserve bank or commercial bank, and not burrow money from banks, hire their people to build roads, schools, desalination plants, etc.
If government spending would stop in the US, the country would fall apart. Example of spending: Citi bank charges the government a tremendous amount of money for the food stamp program… To me it’s stupid to use them, the job is not being done cheaper, nor is it done better.
So, to the world I say, governments print and spend that money on improving your people’s way of life. Do what the US did in the past, create a massive jobs program. World build solar farms, build bridges, build roads, develop a court system, build those buildings, build national research centers, create environmental protection agencies, create a national investigative agency, create schools to train and mature police forces, build police stations, have city and county police forces, sewage treatment plants, run electrical wires everywhere, create national parks, put a few faces in a mountain, by the time you catch up to to US, Britain, Japan, with all those government things, all of your people will be employed. Why? Because business will start to grow. Better not to have the idled hands. Idle hands are trouble. Educated and working people make a peaceful society.
Stop wasting money on weapons.
Well the problem with the world is SPECIES human. And every living human asks oneself “What’s in it for ME?”.