Indonesia adds Google Pixel phones to ban list with iPhone 16

AFP | Jakarta, Indonesia                                                   

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Indonesia has banned the sale of Google Pixel phones over the tech giant’s failure to meet investment regulations, its industry ministry said, days after blocking sales of Apple’s iPhone 16.

Jakarta is seeking to boost investment from foreign tech companies with restrictive measures that require their phones to be 40 percent sourced from parts in Indonesia. “We declared that as long as those products don’t... meet the scheme we have required, they cannot be sold in Indonesia,” industry ministry spokesperson Febri Hendri Antoni Arif told a press briefing Thursday.

“For Google Pixel, they have not obtained the TKDN certificate,” he added, using the acronym of the scheme that imposes the 40 percent rule. Google Indonesia did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

Southeast Asia’s biggest economy has a young, tech-savvy population with more than 100 million people under the age of 30 that tech companies are seeking to capitalise on. Around 22,000 Google Pixel phones had entered Indonesia this year, according to industry ministry data.

Indonesia’s smartphone market shipment share in the second quarter of the year was dominated by China’s Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo, as well as South Korea’s Samsung, according to Counterpoint Research.

The ministry said last week phones blocked from commercial sale could still be carried into Indonesia as long as they were not being traded.

It said iPhone 16 phones had also not met the 40 percent local part requirement. Apple does not have an official store in Indonesia, but chief executive Tim Cook visited in April as the firm explores ways to invest in the country