Apple Inc has signed an agreement with Indonesia to invest in the country, paving the way for sales of the iPhone 16 to resume in Southeast Asia’s largest nation.
The agreement was announced yesterday by Indonesian Minister for Industry Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita in a media briefing in Jakarta. The ministry would begin a process to issue Apple with a permit allowing it to sell its latest smartphone, news outlet Kompas reported.
The pact is set to end a five-month tussle that started in October last year after Indonesia refused to issue a sales permit to Apple, citing its failure to comply with domestic manufacturing requirements for smartphones and tablets.
Photo: EPA-EFE/MADE NAGI
Apple then pledged to invest US$1 billion in Indonesia, an offer Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto directed his ministers to accept. However, the Ministry of Industry last month unexpectedly upheld the ban, as it sought better terms.
The deal is a win for Indonesia, with its hardball tactics paying off to get a major foreign company to invest more to develop its goods in the country and boost local manufacturing, instead of merely using the nation as a sales hub.
The government had previously said that Apple had invested only about US$95 million in Indonesia.
The agreement also comes at an opportune time for Prabowo. The optics of a US tech giant yielding to his administration could be used to boost his domestic standing, which has taken a hit following multiple policy U-turns that have generated confusion. On top of that, his plan for sweeping spending cuts that threatened jobs and scholarships triggered days of protests last week.
For Apple, the deal gives it access to Indonesia’s massive consumer market at a time when sales in China have slowed. Though Apple ranks outside the top five smartphone brands in Indonesia, the country’s population of 278 million people — more than half of whom are under the age of 44 and tech-savvy — is too good an opportunity to miss.
The agreement includes the establishment of a plant on the Indonesian island of Batam to produce AirTags, a device that allows users to track their luggage, pets or other belongings, according to Kartasasmita. Apple is bringing on board one of its significant suppliers, Luxshare Precision Industry Co (立訊精密), to operate the plant.
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
China is clamping down on fertilizer exports to protect its domestic market, industry sources said, putting an additional strain on global markets that were already grappling with shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. China is among the largest fertilizer exporters — shipping more than US$13 billion of it last year — and it has a history of controlling exports to keep prices low for farmers. Shipments through the war-blocked Strait of Hormuz account for about one-third of the sea-borne supply. This month, Beijing banned exports of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources said. The ban, which has not
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
RSS