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Apple Not Able to Open Stores in India Without Selling 30% Locally Sourced Goods

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Re: Apple Not Able to Open Stores in India Without Selling 30% Locally Sourced Goods

#91

Post by [deleted] »

dxbydt wrote: post #33
wrong_variable wrote: post #13

Before people get out their pitchforks. These laws in India are a direct result of 200 years of British 'free' trade. Imagine the amount of damage something like NAFTA has done to the american working class - multiply that with 200 years. While america was in its infancy - before it industrialized - it too used protectionism as a way to allow its local industries to grow, how is it bad if India is trying to do the sa…

What's really going on in India ? You paint a pretty bleak picture. Then I read firsthand reports by someone like yummyfajitas who lives and works there - https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=11766615&goto=item%3Fi... According to that, it is the US that's in the dumps. India has jobs for everyone at every level, whereas in the US people are living in filthy homes because maid service too expensive because $15 minim…

[deleted]

Re: Apple Not Able to Open Stores in India Without Selling 30% Locally Sourced Goods

#92

Post by adventured »

arey_abhishek wrote: post #82
argonaut wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your links cites a report that itself gets its numbers from the "Global Trade Alert," which is an org that aggregates a variety of trade-related actions published by the governments of each country. Only a fraction of these are actually related to governments being protectionist. A huge number of these "actions" appear to be petitions by companies inside a country for trade investigations against other companies or n…

Argonaut, are you suggesting that the chart shows transparency of nations?? That's inferring a lot from one chart :) I don't think America is the most transparent country in the world. Credit Suisse did the research and reported the chart+numbers. From Global Trade Alert's website: 'Global Trade Alert provides real-time information on state measures taken during the current global downturn that are likely to affect f…

America is in fact one of the most transparent nations on earth. [1] That includes the judiciary, presidency, congress, and law structure. The US Government and state governments publish vast amounts of information about their operations, studies, results, bills, spending, research, etc that is publicly available. The US routinely scores among the top few nations when it comes to making such data public.

It's also widely regarded as one of the least corrupt nations. [2] Transparency and low-corruption are two things that very frequently go hand-in-hand.

[1] http://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/transparency-full-...

"Denmark [the US came in #11] is the most transparent country, according to more than 8,000 informed elites from four different regions who filled out surveys for the 2016 Best Countries rankings. The rankings, formed in partnership with brand strategy firm BAV Consulting and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, aim to gauge global perceptions of the world's biggest economies in terms of specific attributes associated with countries."

On corruption the US is listed at #16 by transparency international, ahead of France and Japan, but behind Australia and the UK:

[2] http://www.transparency.org/cpi2015#results-table

Re: Apple Not Able to Open Stores in India Without Selling 30% Locally Sourced Goods

#93

Post by RealGeek »

geodel wrote: post #56

Irrespective of Apple being able open stores, one has to remember India is really tiny market for Apple widgets. There is no comparison to China in term of market size. Apple shipped around 1.7 million phone in India in 2015. This may look lot but going ahead I think they are going sell quite less than that as there is no 2 year upgrade cycle.

Apple sales are weak in India because iPhone is overpriced in India, prices of Apple products in India are a lot higher than US. In 2015, over 100 million smartphones were sold in India.

Apple sells iPhone 6s 16 GB for $920 in India[1], while you can buy comparable Android smartphones from manufacturers like Xiaomi and OnePlus for $300 to $400

Sweet-spot price for Indian middle class is $300 to $400 and they typically upgrade in 1 to 2 years.

[1] http://www.apple.com/in/iphone/compare/

Re: Apple Not Able to Open Stores in India Without Selling 30% Locally Sourced Goods

#94

Post by RealGeek »

wrong_variable wrote: post #90
RealGeek wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal car was stopped by octroi officers near a state border in India. They searched my car, and then said that I should have paid octroi tax on the personal computer I was carrying in the car. I told them that all taxes were paid including VAT and Octroi for the computer when I bought it 5 years ago. The said it doesn't matter, I must stop at the Octroi office and pay taxes again every time I am crossing a sta…

Yes, this is fairly common in all of South Asia. The way to get around this is to look poor and be brown/black. Whenever I go back: 1) I buy a local school bag back ( put my expensive laptop and phone in it ) 2) wear wife beater that is slight dirty. 3) do not shave. 4) speak only in Hindi. 5) wear only chapal ( bathroom style ) 7) let your hair grow and do not comb. Once you look poor enuf - no one will disturb you.…

These tips usually don't help in India. If you look poor and nobody, the police could even beat you up for no reason.

If you look and act rich & influential, then police and Government officials play nice with you.

Re: Apple Not Able to Open Stores in India Without Selling 30% Locally Sourced Goods

#95

Post by eru »

ep103 wrote: post #79
eru wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I have never, ever seen a source claim that it is net negative on a national or local level outside of very, very narrowly defined parameters. Adam Smith already (and lots of other economists since) have argued for unilateral free trade.

That's in keeping with my post

Hmm, I was a bit confused by your multiple negations at the top. Also not quite sure what your point is.

> That's going to be a massive decrease in competition, job growth, etc, overall [when producers move to a cluster].

Can you expand on that? I don't see how---especially if we agree that the clustering is more economically efficient. (If we don't agree on that, we need to talk about it first.)

Re: Apple Not Able to Open Stores in India Without Selling 30% Locally Sourced Goods

#96

Post by walrus01 »

RealGeek wrote: post #94
wrong_variable wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is fairly common in all of South Asia. The way to get around this is to look poor and be brown/black. Whenever I go back: 1) I buy a local school bag back ( put my expensive laptop and phone in it ) 2) wear wife beater that is slight dirty. 3) do not shave. 4) speak only in Hindi. 5) wear only chapal ( bathroom style ) 7) let your hair grow and do not comb. Once you look poor enuf - no one will disturb you.…

These tips usually don't help in India. If you look poor and nobody, the police could even beat you up for no reason. If you look and act rich & influential, then police and Government officials play nice with you.

so, you're screwed either way? or you should try to look middle class and neither rich nor poor?

Re: Apple Not Able to Open Stores in India Without Selling 30% Locally Sourced Goods

#97

Post by argonaut »

arey_abhishek wrote: post #82
argonaut wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your links cites a report that itself gets its numbers from the "Global Trade Alert," which is an org that aggregates a variety of trade-related actions published by the governments of each country. Only a fraction of these are actually related to governments being protectionist. A huge number of these "actions" appear to be petitions by companies inside a country for trade investigations against other companies or n…

Argonaut, are you suggesting that the chart shows transparency of nations?? That's inferring a lot from one chart :) I don't think America is the most transparent country in the world. Credit Suisse did the research and reported the chart+numbers. From Global Trade Alert's website: 'Global Trade Alert provides real-time information on state measures taken during the current global downturn that are likely to affect f…

Credit Suisse just copied the numbers from Global Trade Alert. Did you even look at the reports on the Global Trade Alert website? Or did you just read the "About" page?

Mentioning Trump is just FUD and indirection. You can mention him if he's elected and if he manages to enact protectionist policies.

Re: Apple Not Able to Open Stores in India Without Selling 30% Locally Sourced Goods

#98

Post by sandGorgon »

fleitz wrote: post #5
justinlardinois wrote: post #3

> Apple was expected to receive an exemption from the rule, earning a recommendation from country's Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, but the ministry of finance has decided Apple's products do not fall into the cutting-edge technology category. A source told Reuters Apple did not provide enough material to justify the exemption. So did Apple just submit a crappy application? Or is the ministry not follo…

India is heavily invested in protectionism, that's the primary issue, the exemption is in place because it was clear no one was going to make smart phones there.

OnePlus manufactures in India.

http://wap.business-standard.com/article/companies/oneplus-p...

Re: Apple Not Able to Open Stores in India Without Selling 30% Locally Sourced Goods

#99

Post by tarikjn »

eru wrote: post #77
rahulsidhu wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, my guess would be that this decision was taken at the highest political levels, and I applaud this decision. I read that the govt. set up a small committee of bureaucrats which recommended a waiver and I was hoping for this outcome. This would hopefully incentivise Apple to move at-least some of their assembly to Foxconn India. We need all the jobs and economic activity we can get.

I don't know, forced Import Substitution Industrialization ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_substitution_industrial... ) hasn't worked very well around the world so far.

Worthy quote from that article:

"While import substitution policies might create jobs in the short run, as domestic producers replace foreign producers, economics theory shows that in the long run output and growth will be lower than it would otherwise have been. This is because import substitution denies the country the benefits to be gained from specialisation and foreign imports. The law of comparative advantage shows how countries will gain from trade. Moreover, protectionism leads to dynamic inefficiency: Domestic producers have no incentive from foreign competitors to reduce costs or improve products. Import substitution can impede growth through poor allocation of resources, and its effect on exchange rates harms exports."

Re: Apple Not Able to Open Stores in India Without Selling 30% Locally Sourced Goods

#100

Post by RealGeek »

ikeboy wrote: post #20
pcurve wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least 30 per cent of the value of procurement of manufactured/processed products shall be sourced from Indian small industries. So for high margin product like iphone, they're going to base it on cost of good or (materials). There's probably some fudging room.

For each product? You can't sell any product unless 30% of it was made in India?

These FDI restrictions were placed for multi-brand retail stores like Walmart.

I guess Apple stores are considered multi-brand because they sell some products from other brands as well.

These restrictions are only for foreign companies. An Indian company can sell 100% imported products without any restrictions, but they are required to pay import duty.

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