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Apple Not Allowed To Open Stores In India (reuters.com)
ffkom writes: Reuters reports: "India has said Apple Inc must meet a rule obliging foreign retailers to sell at least 30 percent locally-sourced goods if it wishes to open stores in the country, a senior government official told Reuters. A change in legislation last year exempted foreign retailers selling high-tech goods from the rule, which states 30 percent of the value of goods sold in the store should be made in India. However, Apple's products were not considered to be in this category, said the official, who has direct knowledge of the matter." Now just imagine what Apple stores in the U.S. would look like if 30% of their offerings had to be made in the US... "They did ask for a waiver but didn't provide any material on record to justify it. The decision was taken only after a thorough examination of their application," the source said. Apple planned to open at least three stores in India by the end of 2017. Separate sources said Apple talked with the Indian government about a relaxation of the rule before it filed an application to open stores in the country in January. In a report from The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled), one of India's government officials said, "We are sticking to the old policy. We want local sourcing for job creation. You can't have a situation where people view India only as a market. Let them start doing some manufacturing here." Currently, Apple sells its products "through a network of Indian-owned distribution companies and retailers."
Apple should release a locally manufactured and sourced line of jewelry fitting with the other Apple products. The required amount of gold would probably cause structural issues for the stores, though. ;)
Apple will open its wallet and everything will change. Indian bureaucrats and officials care about one thing: bribe money.
This is flagrant protectionism, and obviously done in bad faith. They should be kicked out the WTO.
These policies are clearly jingoistic and nativistic. Why should the people of one country be privileged over the people of any other? Just because they were born there? That's not thinking globally. That's the kind of thinking that leads people to believe that building walls is the solution to problems.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
http://9to5mac.com/2016/05/09/foxconn-india-iphone-manufacturing/
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
.... the bribe wasn't high enough and Apple called their bluff and lost. Why? src. http://www.reuters.com/article...
"However, Apple's products were not considered to be in this category, said the official, who has direct knowledge of the matter.
He declined to be named as the decision by the finance ministry is not public. A finance ministry spokesman was not immediately available for comment."
So a secret decision uh?
Bach says it all.
They didn't do the needful.
They want the upsides of open trade, such as H1B wages flowing back to India and offshore outsourcing setting up shop, but NOT the downsides, such as allowing foreign products in that may reduce local jobs. This frustrates Americans to no end.
Table-ized A.I.
Apple just hasn't paid the right officials.
Protectionism is only a benefit to bad companies, good companies will suffer.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
I know many *really* good coders from india... and i know a shitload of really bad too..
The thing is if you want to hire a really good coder from india it will cost you about the same as hiring a really good one locally.
30% of the VALUE of goods sold. If it was just numbers they could stock a few hundred locally made iPhone covers to meet the rules
And considering just how overpriced the shit is, even opening a Starbucks wouldn't do it.
No, not even considering Starbucks' own well known price policy of selling black colored and oddly flavored water for a fortune. Thinking about it, that couldn't fly in India. If they wanted black colored and oddly flavored water, they could simply fill their mug in the Ganges River.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Stores being required to sell 30% domestic crap.
99% of the stores would have to close shop. Including car dealerships.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
30% BY VALUE.
And, be honest, what's the value of an "Apple Genius"?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is fine until you realize that "goods that cannot be produced in the country" includes crap that is patented the fuck out of and the patent owner just plainly refuses to produce it in your country.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
30% by value.
You'd have to sell an awful lot of Indian junk just to justify the sale of a single pair of Apple headphones...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I already have seen the comments below, crying mordio about how that hurts the indian economics. ... I see no difference in that law to the american 'cars can only be sold by dealers' and other 'stupid' laws.
Sorry guys, no idea
Can't be so hard for Apple to sell Displays and Hard-Drives etc. from Indian origin or simply add an entertainment section and sell Bollywood DVDs. Also as Apple usually gives discounts to Students, it would surely be a lever to point that out to the local government.
However, it is shortsighted because in my (limited) experience Apple Stores are stores with an incredible huge staffing. You never wait in a line at a cashier, or wait for a personal answering questions. Usually the next closest staff person comes and helps you with questions and bills you right away. You just give him the credit card, he puts it into a small device or makes a photo with his iPhone. If you already are a customer, nothing more is to be done (iTunes or Apple), he asks if you want a bill, if yes, via post or eMail, and thats it.
You only need to go to a cashier if you want to pay cash or with special European cards (EC, Maestro etc.)
You basically go to a shelf, take your stuff and leave.
The Apple Shop in Paris at the Lovre easily has over 50 sales staff. And that means with 16 business hours something like 100 + a bit of management etc.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I think that requiring stores to sell a % of goods from the local market makes good sense.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So how are all the other stores already selling Apple stuff getting by?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
How can you sell 30% locally sourced goods until you open up shop and see what people buy? I mean let's say Apple has for sale some accessory Indian made, maybe it would make up 30% of sales, who knows until you open your doors?
So who is allowed to sell electronics in India? Do Korean, Japanese and Chinese electronics companies have facilities in India? Are there many locally made cell phones or TVs? Are there wafer fab lines? How does this work exactly? Has this problem occurred for other international manufacturers?
Why is Snark Required?
Looking at large stores, I believe they should do that in more countries. Can you imagine what that would do for e.g. Walmart?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Sad to see that India hasn't fully thrown off the economic ignorance that stifled their growth from independence until the late 1980s. Protectionism is nearly as stupid as price controls.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Hate? Nah. They're actually decent in terms of quality and usability. What ticks me off is their use of patents and that increasingly form beats function.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They know who to bribe. Duh.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
such as fruit
Such as apples, maybe?
Good thing India has never seen fit to invalidate patents to produce items locally that can't be imported (or imported at a reasonable price), otherwise your comment might not make sense.
Every time I price out, e.g., a Lenovo Carbon X1, to match the specs of a Macbook Air; the Lenovo costs more.
False dichotomy. If you were to spec a Macbook to match the specs of a Lenovo, you would likewise end up with a more expensive product.
You're pre-supposing that the Macbook Air has the ultimate feature set which others should match.
Others may want features like built-in HDMI, clip-on batteries, separate mic and headphone ports, changeable batteries and or HDs, a three button touchpad, upgradeable RAM or docking stations. Only by disregarding such choices because the Macbook doesn't offer them can you do a comparison to anything else. That will then be a biased comparison, favoring the Macbook Air even before you start.
"India's government officials said, "We are sticking to the old policy. We want local sourcing for job creation. You can't have a situation where people view India only as a market. Let them start doing some manufacturing here." Seems hypocritical since India made it clear that it considers and restriction on outsourcing protectionism.
So Apple can just hire some properly placed officials to speak about something, and pay a nice speaking fee, like $225k US. Since the US doesn't consider speaking fees to be bribes for its officials, it should be OK for US companies too, right?
So Apple is the only company allowed to take advantage of people who want the super best model now? Lenovo is only doing what Apple is doing. It's called competition. I'd say Apple pretty much pioneered the way in artificially high prices and now other companies are following suit.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Not sure why I got modded down. People don't understand the difference between beauty/convenience and basic requirement?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The US govt does this all the time. When Airbus wanted to sell tankers they had to build a factory in the US and give 70% of the value to US subcontractors including their direct competitor Boeing
**Life is too short to be serious**
Finally a govt has called out what everyone has known. Apple's products are not technologically cutting edge hence not eligible for the waiver.
Much more advanced Android phones are manufactured in India so their is nothing preventing Apple from manufacturing in India.
Apple is anyway known for taking technology invented by others and repackaging it in beauitful formats.
Its the same technologically as a marketing firm (you can know a company' core capabilities by seeing who has status - at Google its the Engineers. At Apple it is the Marketers).
**Life is too short to be serious**
"You can't have a situation where people view The United States only as a market. Let them start doing some manufacturing here."
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
Each side [...] has reclaimed 60% of the labor (unemployment). [...] With that additional money, the consumers can now buy more products
If you're unemployed, you can buy zero products. You try to cover that:
In short: the labor freed up from the farm is repurposed. [...] we make more doctors and stuff like Netflix and cell phone networks.
These are also more highly skilled professions, for which most of "the labor freed up from the farm" is likely unqualified. Who covers the cost of retraining?
Works for Hillary and Bill - should be fine.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Those other stores aren't foreign owned and so don't have the same restriction.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
(Hence my example of $225k, which is apparently Hillary's most common ask / "what they offered" fee...)
Our government became a plutocracy and did things us voters didn't ask for, like lopsided trade policies and legalized bribery (Citizens United ruling), so that the plutocrats could grow even plutoier.
And the Indian government keeps selling the virtues of "free trade" also whenever there is trade and visa contention. It's becoming the same way.
Table-ized A.I.
The Carbon X1 costs more than the MBAir for similar configurations.
You still don't get it, do you? There is no similar configuration, because to configure something "similar", you have to disregard any features that's on the X1 but not on the Macbook Air. Which may be fine for you, but you're still comparing apples to oranges, and presupposing that what the X1 has that the Macbook Air doesn't can be disregarded when comparing similarity.
Apple opens a store that sells both China-made computers AND locally-made jewelry. I bet you could get people to buy Apple-themed jewelry. Make it an India exclusive and you'll have tons of people buying it just to export.
to "India enforces law designed to ensure it remains backwater shithole"
It's well known that greedy capitalists like to sleep on beds of Rupees, so India definitely should be scared of those Rupees not getting spent.
After all, even if the only place Rupees can be spent is India, they might get trapped in one of those beds, which would mean that those Indian consumers would essentially be getting iphones without having to pay them back with any real resources (only some bits of paper or electronic bits)... That's tough...
[/end sarcasm]
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
I remember when Apple stuff was expensive. Hmm.. I think it was that Quadra .. However, you could always get a cheap mac at woolworth's too.. After Steve came back on board in the late 90s, they were all mostly about the same. So that really is some old complaint. Still hear perople say it though.. Of course the high end mac pros, with specs matching SGI workstations, were pricier. Somebody want to remind me how much one of the Silicon Graphics workstations cost, BTW ? ;-)
But we seem to like being viewed as just a market for cheap goods.
This reminds me a story of Rolls-Royce engines in India. They couldn't sell them unless "part of it is created in India". So, what they did - they created a useless metal thing and a factory in India was working hard making it. They thought it's important part of the engine. In fact, it was transported to UK, only to be melted back to metal. However, Indians believed it was a joint venture and created work places.
USA can take a hard lesson here: Do the same for foreign retailers here. That will bring some jobs back here. FURTHER, at least half of all Indian peoples need to have been made here in the USA to be allowed in! AND, they must be taxed higher to be able to take our jobs, too. Call it TICS: Trans Indian Commerce Solution. Now USA gets a fair shot.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
And Apple already has their products sold by third party retailers. This whole condition is only if it wants to open an exclusive apple store. Also, your apples analogy won't work because apples are much cheaper than the iShit Apple is peddling. No way they can account for 30% of the value of goods. Also, you must understand that Indian government is not that big of an idiot. Apple must comply with the spirit of the law, not just the letter.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Because they are Indian.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.