Apparently people are spreading misinformation that Apple has backed out of its Rp1.6 trillion ($100 million) investment in Indonesia and canceled plans to build a resource plant after Tim Cook’s visit to Indonesia last month, based on a clickbait headline.
First of all, that plant cancellation story was lifted from news coverage from early 2023 when an official from the Maritime Affairs and Investment Ministry claimed that Apple approached the government in 2016 about building a lead processing plant but the company reportedly said that the government must get rid of illegal mining operations and meet the company’s environmental, social, and governance guidelines. The government’s failure to comply with that request meant that plans to build the plant were shelved, the official said. That is old story, nothing about that is new. There was also no investment amount mentioned because it never came to that point.
Secondly, the $100 million investment has been spent gradually since 2018 on establishing and running three Apple Developer Academy sites with another one expected to open in Bali next year. It’s an ongoing investment as part of regulatory compliance to meet the local component requirement necessary continue selling 4G and 5G smartphones in the country. Back in 2016 Apple reportedly committed $44 million on establishing an Apple Developer Academy in the country within three years, the first of which opened in 2018.
This investment is indeed small compared to the amount of money spent by Indonesian consumers on purchasing iPhones in 2023. Figures from the Ministry of Industries revealed that out of the nearly 2.8 million smartphones imported by Indonesia last year, 85% of them had been iPhones because despite domestic manufacturing of 50 million smartphones a year, Apple’s smartphones are fully imported.
Apple supplier Pegatron was once reported to invest $1 billion to open an Apple manufacturing plant in Batam in 2019 but that report was either inaccurate or that the company drastically changed its plans in short order. While Pegatron’s consumer electronics plant did open in Batam, it has yet to manufacture Apple products to date.
Certain government officials and critics have pointed out that the amount invested by Apple in the country is minuscule in comparison, especially when other Apple products are included. Additionally, with Apple’s newly announced $250 million investment in Singapore to expand its original campus in the country and the company’s increased investment in Vietnam, where the company has spent nearly $16 billion since 2019, Apple’s Indonesian investment numbers and plans are incomparable.
It’s for this very reason that President Joko Widodo has assigned his most senior aide, Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investments Luhut B. Panjaitan, to ensure that not only will Apple’s investment plans come to fruition but that the country can play a bigger role in Apple’s manufacturing and development operations.
In short, it’s simply not true that Apple already canceled its recently announced $100 million investment. All the commotion came about due to the conflation of a government official’s statement in early 2023 and the recently cited investment figure for Apple’s Developer Academy.
AuliaSays 