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Indian Government import hurdles affect Apple and Xiaomi devices

India and China have been engaging in a war of words for a while now.  The border skirmish that took place in July has led to several disputes and talks which have not led to much. The world also seems to be having a tough time with China due to its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has led to an escalation of problems around the world, leading to trade embargos of various kinds. In recent news, India’s stringent quality checks and clearances regarding Chinese goods have led to import troubles for various brands. Here’s a quick look at what impact the control measures will have on the electronics industry.

How Import hurdles affect Apple

The import of goods such as the new iPhone model and several devices by Xiaomi has been delayed due to India’s more stringent quality checks. All electronic goods coming from China now require tight quality clearances, leading to delays in procurement and order fulfillment. Since the release of the new iPhone model early last month, the demand for the phone has been rising in the country. However, industry sources claim that the need for better quality measures has led to a significant slow-down in the import of such goods. In the past, the Bureau of Indian Standards took around 15 days to process such imports. However, recently the same process has been taking up to two months. 

Other Moves

The BIS began to delay the quality checks and reports sometime in August, shortly after the border incident. The delays in quality checks mostly had an impact on the shipping of laptops, smartphones, and smartwatches. Experts believe that this was a direct repercussion of India’s deteriorating ties with China. Since the border skirmish, India has made the rules regarding foreign investment a lot more stringent. While this has made it more difficult for Chinese companies in India, the government has also been pushing for other reforms. Recently, the Indian government banned hundreds of Chinese applications, including some by ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent. All three are some of the biggest tech giants in the world, worth billions of US Dollars, and the government banned an additional 43 apps on Tuesday.

Moves from the Electronics Sector

Since these measures have led to a bottleneck in the procurement of the new Apple models, executives from Apple India have begun negotiations. Top executives from the company are talking to BIS to get them to speed up the process of approval. The executives are also providing assurances that the company will shortly set up manufacturing plants in India for local production and assembly. While it remains unclear just how long the delay will extend, both parties refused to comment when asked what their opinion was on the matter. 

Apple

While Apple does have assembly stations in India, newer models, like the iPhone 12, come from China. India has been pushing heavily to set up establishments in India and make the production a local affair. Contract manufacturers in China make a bulk of Apple’s devices which are then shipped to all four corners of the world. As of yesterday, the BIS had over 1080 pending applications for tablets, laptops, and other devices. A staggering 669 of those have been delayed for over 20 days as per reports from the agency’s website. These included several units built in Chinese factories of Wistron and Compal Electronics and Hangzhou Hikvision. Some of these applications have been pending since way back in September, leading to supply chain delays and hiccups.

Boycott Calls

Both nationalist groups and Indian manufacturers have been calling for a complete ban on imported Chinese goods in recent months. On a similar line, Prime Minister Modi has also been heavily pushing an agenda that supports local production and self-reliance. Experts believe that the Ministry of Electronics and IT are pushing Indian manufacturers to produce more goods locally. As per BIS regulations, various electronic devices need to meet specific predefined standards. While the clearance delays do cause problems for large tech giants, it allows Indians to source more locally.

With the festive season coming up, the delays regarding clearance will lead to huge problems for several companies. Since the government restricted the importing of TVs in July, this is another segment that has been affected by recent events. Such moves will have a detrimental impact on brands such as Samsung and Xiaomi. This might be a crucial moment for India as it tries to improve and increase its domestic production.  We will have to wait and see if the delays hurt the electronics sector or give it an impetus to start producing more locally. The latter will lead to the availability of more products while also providing employment opportunities to millions.

PUBG Mobile

Indian Government Bans Another 118 Apps Including PUBG

The Indian government took a big decision on Wednesday by deciding to ban an additional 118 or so mobile applications, including the uber-popular video game PUBG. The move follows in the heels of an earlier decision to ban 59 Chinese applications earlier this year. All of these bans were a result of rising tensions between the two superpowers. India cited security reasons and data privacy concerns as the primary cause of the ban. Here’s a look at the impact the move will have, and what led to the government taking such drastic measures.

India Making Big Moves

Tensions had been high ever since the India-China scuffle at the Ladakh border a few months ago. These border skirmishes, coupled with the world’s resentment towards China for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, has snowballed into trade embargos and political battles around the world. Following India’s model, the US too recently banned the usage of a sleuth of Chinese applications citing security concerns. The Ministry of Information and Technology released an official statement yesterday, wherein it said that 118 apps have now been banned in India. The reason being cited that these apps were prejudicial to the integrity, security, sovereignty, and defence of the nation. As per the statement put out by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the ban falls under the purview of Section 69A of the Indian IT Act.

Major Apps to Leave India

Some of the biggest names in the list of apps now banned in India are Baidu, FaceU, WeChat, and PUBG Mobile. Several reports state that PUBG has over 33 million active users in India, meaning that this move will have a significant impact on the game. In fact, most reports state that PUBG is one of the most popular applications in India, with over 13 million users signing in every day. The Ministry noted that it frequently received complaints regarding people misusing these applications in various ways. Some of the complaints referred to the stealing or personal and private data and then selling such data to servers located outside India. The fact that such data could be mined, processed, and analyzed to harm the sovereignty of the country is what led to such drastic steps as per the statement from the Ministry. 

PUBG Mobile
Image Source: businessinsider.in

Further Notices and Suggestions

Furthermore, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, which works under the Ministry of Home Affairs also released a statement of recommendations regarding how to block these apps. In the public domain as well, people had been asking the government to take more stringent actions to protect the private data of Indian users. Such a targeted move will therefore help put to rest worries that a large part of the demographic had regarding the safety and security of the Indian cyberspace. The government has decided to retaliate at the best time, as global superpowers unite to protect their data and frameworks from foreign assaults and attacks.

Earlier Steps

Just a few months back, in June, the Centre had banned another 59 applications, with most of them being Chinese-based on similar grounds. This list included popular apps like UC Browser and TikTok. The recent ban on an additional 118 apps will see PUBG Mobile leaving India for an indefinite period. The wildly popular shooter videogame ranks within the world’s top five most popular smartphone games and boasts of over 734 million downloads. The game, which comes under Tencent Holdings Limited’s videogame department also has a loyal fan following in India, leading to social media being flooded with memes on the ban. The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi himself had referenced the game last year during a talk on exam stress. This interview after it went live led to the creation of the “Yeh PUBG-wala hai kya?” meme, which roughly translated to the PM asking a worried mother whether her son was a PUBG player.

It is quite evident that the ban on apps has a clear political agenda behind it. The very fact that the ban came after the Indian government accused China of using troops provocatively along the Pangong Lake in Ladakh is proof enough of this. As the Chinese troops had made a similar move on August 31st, the government was left seething at this provocation. However, the Indian army was able to successfully thwart both actions, preventing any damage or loss for the Indians. Recent months have witnessed several clashes and showdowns, with over 20 soldiers being martyred in the Galwan Valley in June. Political or not, there is no doubt that the banning of these apps will have a ripple in our cyberspace. It will be interesting to see whether China will retaliate in any way to these bans, as TikTok gears up to fight the US government through a civil lawsuit.