Why is no one calling this out as foul play? India seems to want one rule for when it is abroad and another when it's at home.
USA does this also, it wants free trade when it wants to export goods and services to other nations but opposes it when it comes to importing labor ( H1B VISA cap etc ).
This is not evil, it is this competition between nations that improves standard of living for people everywhere.
If you're working in another country, you're not spending money on tax, rent, food, utilities, etc. in your home country, you're spending them in the host country. Most of your income is spent in the host country. For your own example, most H1Bs want to live and spend their money in the US, not send money back home.
So it's actually a terrible 'trade' for the originating country, they lose skilled workers to the US, workers they paid to train and educate, for nothing in return.
What's the 'trade' you talk of? Labor is not trade because what does the home country get out of it?
Free trade is a completely different kettle of fish to free labor markets.
Do you also know that many hotels in the USA are acquired by the Tata Group? The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Boston is one good example. Again, the group employs only locals and has it's profits stored in the foreign country (US in this case).
There is no reason to believe that trade of goods or capital is lopsided to only harm the United States.
On a per-capita basis, I don't believe this is anywhere nere correct.
>“Why even consider allowing import of used phones when import of other used goods such as cars are precluded by 300 percent duty levies?”
is what creates much of the poverty. Why not just let people buy and sell phones and cars and set up businesses without the government blocking it?
The problem is that this is the first time a foreign company has requested the Government to grant license to sell second hand phones in the secondary market. What this essentially means is that Apple would dump second hand phones it receives from it's recycling policy World over into Indian secondary market. If the Government allows this then it sets a dangerous precedent with all other electronic manufacturers wanting a license to sell e-waste in India's secondary market. This is already happening with e-waste being smuggled into India illegally creating environmental hazards. Read this article published in 2007: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-china-idUSKCN0V4200. Imagine the amount of e-waste already imported illegally into India since 2007.
This has nothing to do with poverty or human development index. US environmental laws are strict enough to not allow e-waste from accumulating in US soil. So Apple is using it's "Recycling policy" to dump e-waste in India which doesn't yet have strict environmental laws. If Apple extends it's "Recycling policy" to second hand phones there would be no barrier to entry into India's secondary market. It's up to Apple to clarify it's policy.
Whatever Apple equipment you wish to recycle, we will collect and recycle it responsibly for free.
http://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/europe.html#...
If you go further out in the past, you will see the same thing for the US as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_histo....
So yes, huge amounts of foreign brands sell in India, but perhaps with local manufacturing or assembly. It is not a closed country at all.
edit/bid/big
http://www.wsj.com/articles/india-wont-allow-foreign-investm...
The same applies to insurance, lending and banking business. So the brands we have are Tata-Starbucs, Bharti-Axa, Birla-Sunlife, etc.
To name but two, China has similar one-sided regulations and Switzerland has companies that can aggressively mount hostile takeovers of foreign competition, whilst being effectively protected from same (Nestles being the obvious example).
Contradictory attitudes seem quite common!
EDIT: Also you are assuming Apple does not have retail stores in India. In fact there are multiple Apple stores in every city in India. There are many who own Apple products but there are many more who purchase Sony/Samsung/Micromax/Karbonn etc as they tend to be less expensive. None of the other companies use India as a dumping ground for second hand phones. Why should Apple be any different?
Why the negative phrasing? What is wrong with reuse? Would it be any difference if the phones were new? Is it an environmental issue?
But.
There have been considerable environmental problems with companies dumping e-waste on developing world countries.
Sometimes this e-waste is described as "used, low cost computing equipment", sometimes it's described as "recyclable waste".
Either of those sound fine. When I hear them I think of a small local co-op fixing the computers and installing free software and distributing them to schools or whatnot. Or of people dismantling and sorting the stuff, and recycling for cash.
What actually happens is something like the e-waste dump in Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sch78
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/dec/14/to...
"To be sure, Apple has some of the industry’s most exacting protocols for recycling products. The company says it typically manages to collect and recycle 85 percent, by weight, of devices produced seven years earlier. Apple’s eventual plan, as stated in its application to the government, is to set up facilities that take discarded phones and refurbish them for use."
You seem to be set against this so under what conditions could Apple (or anybody else) sell refurbished phones that would be acceptable to you? Or do they become problem immediately once they are not new?
Would you be willing to buy a second hand refurbished phone from Apple if the recycling policy does not apply for the second hand phone?
IOW, the recycling policy DOES apply, IMO, even if there is no downstream from my use recycling intent (which I think is still an open question from the text and the overall good results Apple gets on recycling).
As a US consumer, I generally buy and use 13-18 month old iPhones until they no longer reliably function or until the battery life is too poor, then I go buy another one-generation old phone. Apple has nothing to do with this, other than keeping the upgrade treadmill going for everyone else so I can get my $200-250 used phones to put on an MVNO (Ting in my case).
If Apple's policy includes second hand recycling then there would be no barriers to entry. It would be good if Apple made it clear. There are too many old phones that are available in the secondary market. This is already creating a lot of e-waste which India doesn't have the resources to dispose off. The only other solution is for India to dump this e-waste to even lesser developing countries but that would be shrugging away responsibility.
The other problem is that, by giving Apple permission, India would set a precedent. If Apple is given permission to sell second hand phones, don't you think other mobile manufactures like Sony/Samsung/Karbon etc would also want similar permissions? They would be happy to create "recycling policies" on paper if that would ensure them access to India's secondary market. The question is who will enforce it?
Apple would only sell second hand phones on India if their was a market for them.
On the other hand we all know what is happening in China. Even with Apple having it's own store it has a massive problem of dealing with unlicensed copy-cat Apple stores. Read this article for more info: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-china-idUSKCN0V4200
There are many unlicensed apple stores in China, I live right next to one, but they do not have a pricing advantage compared to the Apple store, so why not just buy there?
Is there any country that doesn't do that?
Note: I'm not commenting on whether or not this practice will actually work for India in the long run