Friday, August 4, 2023 9:10 am3 Comments

• News

Apple is among the biggest tech names freezing new imports of laptops and tablets to India after the South Asian country abruptly banned inbound shipments without a license. Others include HP and Samsung.

Sankalp Phartiyal for Bloomberg News:

Regulators on Thursday surprised the world’s biggest PC makers when they made licenses mandatory for import of electronics from small tablets to all-in-one PCs without a license. Laptop makers had been bracing for some government measures aimed at reducing reliance on imports and boosting local production, but the sudden licensing imposition caught the industry off-guard, people familiar with the matter said, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Tech firms are now engaging with New Delhi on how to most quickly obtain licenses at a period of heightened consumer interest with India’s Diwali shopping season and back-to-school period approaching, the people said.

Companies… will get at least one month to apply for import licenses, a senior technology ministry official told reporters in New Delhi Friday. The government is simplifying the process of applying for licenses which can be approved, in as little as a day, the official added. Officials are also helping companies for the clearance of shipments already in transit to the South Asian nation as the halt threatens to disrupt a multibillion-dollar trade in foreign PCs at a crucial time.

MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote yesterday, “Apple is all in on India and we can see the company being granted exemptions or expedited licensing given that the company’s current push to diversify beyond China strongly involves significant manufacturing and assembly investments in India by Apple and their assemblers.”

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