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iPhone 16 Still Banned in Indonesia Despite $1B Apple Investment Deal
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They should 😊. Otherwise every country will go bankrupt over time. The balance sheet should be equal.
I wish they’d thrown some more money in the development of Siri and other R&D. But stockholders are more important these days.
But Timmy has more millions up his sleeve. He will eventually charge the customers for being a philanthropic 😈
It doesn't matter if they pay it themselves. If it costs us more to buy stuff from there, we buy less from them. Therefore, they sell less.
Indonesia is the world’s 4th largest country by population. I’d say the sales opportunity is significant. I respect Indonesia for following their own laws and not succumbing to blatant bribes by Apple, et al.
Is this really just a fundraising drive for the new city of Nusantara, the 32.5bn dollar project to move the capital from the sinking city of Jakarta?
This sounds a lot like the same attitude that Brexiteers had prior to the UK leaving the EU. We are still watching the "-FO" part of that equation play out.
I mean...why IS palm oil in seemingly all mass-market foods now??? It's unhealthy and environmentally destructive.
more likely shows you should never give in to blackmail.
they always want more... lesson learned surely.
large population of not wealthy people mostly.
hardly the Apple demographic of purchasers...
having been to Bali many times, Apple products have a great reputation among residents. A lust factor.
but too high a price for most locals.
a few locals get them for business and they see tourists with them all the time.
No.
Indonesia's rule has always been % domestic components. Apple said they couldn't do it and suggested as an alternative $ investments in AirTags (wtf).
Other companies like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo have all invested in local smartphone production for at least a decade. This isn't some surprise legislation.
Apple lobbied successfully in the past but they're failing now.
show me the link to your claim...
there are plenty of imported items you can buy in Bali.
they tax the heck out of some of them, like wine or spirits, but there is no local content rule.
this is a pure money grab shakedown.
tvs arent made with 35% local content.
nor other white goods or electronics.
and the local Oppo factory, what components are MADE in Indonesia or is it just assembly and packaging? that adds little. just cheapish labour.
Indonesia is a potentially large market, but with a current smartphone ASP of under $300 the portion of it that's currently targetable by Apple selling iPhones is relatively small. Not small in absolute terms, but almost certainly not worth building the infrastructure to manufacture 35% of the iPhones sold there in the country.
Just establishing the infrastructure to do that, I'd wager, would substantially increase the cost of iPhones sold there enough that the addressable market would end up even smaller than it currently is.
The corruption issue is also not trivial. Setting aside Prabowo himself--I have a good friend in Indonesia who personally witnessed crimes against humanity committed by people under his command, and are as a result is not exactly excited about his presidency--the level of corruption in Indonesia is not trivial, and for those of us who live elsewhere it's hard to understand. Bribing people in charge of imports just to get the package someone mailed to you through customs has been described to me as fact of life in a way that's almost unfathomable to me as a resident of the US.
Apple is demonstrably willing to play ball with corrupt governments to get its way, but you need to be really convinced that there's a payoff to make it worth the uncertainty and risk.
No, they're not the same. Not even close. If you think they are, maybe try moving to China or Russia and criticizing the government there or running for office as an outsider. There are levels of corruption, and levels of autocracy. Indonesia is doing better than Russia, and the US is (currently, at least) doing better than Indonesia.
Fatalist claims "they're all the same" blinds us to seeing where things are going right and wrong, and when they're getting better or worse, and sets us up to pick the worst possible leaders because we convince ourselves that the worse (or worst) people and ideas must be just as bad as the ones that are not, in fact, as bad.
Just establishing the infrastructure to do that, I'd wager, would substantially increase the cost of iPhones sold there enough that the addressable market would end up even smaller than it currently is.
The corruption issue is also not trivial. Setting aside Prabowo himself--I have a good friend in Indonesia who personally witnessed crimes against humanity committed by people under his command, and are as a result is not exactly excited about his presidency--the level of corruption in Indonesia is not trivial, and for those of us who live elsewhere it's hard to understand. Bribing people in charge of imports just to get the package someone mailed to you through customs has been described to me as fact of life in a way that's almost unfathomable to me as a resident of the US.
Apple is demonstrably willing to play ball with corrupt governments to get its way, but you need to be really convinced that there's a payoff to make it worth the uncertainty and risk.
This attitude is why we can't have nice things. Every country has problems, to be sure, but believing the US and UK are as bad as Russia and China demonstrates a big part of why people are willing to sign on for terrible things because "it's all awful, everyone is the same".
No, they're not the same. Not even close. If you think they are, maybe try moving to China or Russia and criticizing the government there or running for office as an outsider. There are levels of corruption, and levels of autocracy. Indonesia is doing better than Russia, and the US is (currently, at least) doing better than Indonesia.
Fatalist claims "they're all the same" blinds us to seeing where things are going right and wrong, and when they're getting better or worse, and sets us up to pick the worst possible leaders because we convince ourselves that the worse (or worst) people and ideas must be just as bad as the ones that are not, in fact, as bad.
Simply start manufacturing chargers in Indonesia, like Toshiba used to do, and bundle those chargers with the iPhone 16. Easily exceed 35% by volume (or weight).
Basically every countries now want a piece of Apple pie. iPhone is a lucrative industry with which it drives the global economy in a huge scale. Contents, internet data, storage, chips, telco, even tourism since new phones with better cameras make tourists more likely to visit new places (i.e Bali in Indonesia). It's unwise for tech companies to just put a pile of money heavily on a single region.
Is this the same US torturing and imprisoning many innocent Muslims at Guantanamo Bay post 9/11 arrested on the flimsy excuses. Also the same US who were separating children under 5 from parents during immigration processing and holding them in cages scared to death.
US & UK invading Iraq and Afghanistan is no different to Russia invading Ukraine. Both leaders of countries fabricating reasons to invade another country.
People are already picking the worst possible leaders in so called democratic countries. Trump in the US and Keir Starmer in the UK who has already started killing the economy and heaping misery on its population.
So yes every government is the same just being idiots at different points in time.
It’s like hypocritical countries saying China etc need to cut fossil fuel usage when they built their entire economy on it just many years earlier.
Not everyone at that prison did a crime. Just happened to be at the wrong place when a bus pulled up and took everyone. Ever wonder why that part of the world hates the USA?
We are no better and in many cases worse than the colonial powers of the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s and 1800s in the treatment of other peoples. Ever wonder how many folks stolen from Africa to pick our cotton never even lived to arrive during the crossing?
Today, some USA folks at all levels of income and power are starting to show bias like back in the Jim Crowe days.
We really do have issues here.
We are no better and in many cases worse than the colonial powers of the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s and 1800s in the treatment of other peoples. Ever wonder how many folks stolen from Africa to pick our cotton never even lived to arrive during the crossing?
Today, some USA folks at all levels of income and power are starting to show bias like back in the Jim Crowe days.
We really do have issues here.
Again, the fact that the US makes mistakes, and has made mistakes throughout its history, doesn't mean they're just as bad as China, that is currently ethnically cleansing minorities throughout its territory, or Russia, that literally invaded its neighbor and has been raping its neighbor's women and kidnapping its neighbor's children over the past three years.
Afghanistan is absolutely different. The country allowed Al Qaida to operate with impunity in their territory, and then protected them even after 9/11. And while I was never a fan of the war in Iraq (protested against it even), Saddam Hussein was an evil and dangerous man who used chemical weapons on his own people. Now there are lots of evil and dangerous leaders around the world, and again, I was against the war, but claiming that the war to remove him was "no different" from an autocrat invading another country simply because he wants its territory is absurd.
We know better now! Is the correct answer, "well we now know it's killing the planet, but we have to be fair, so go ahead and continue killing the planet?" Of course not. That's like arguing that "my grandparents could buy cigarettes as teenagers because no one know smoking was bad for you, therefore the government shouldn't be allowed to ban the sale of cigarettes to minors because that wouldn't be fair". Ludicrous argument.