Apple is getting close to making a deal with Indonesia that could let them start selling the iPhone 16 again. According to Bloomberg, this deal involves Apple investing more money in the country.
Back in October, Indonesia stopped the sale of the iPhone 16 because Apple wasn’t making enough of the phone parts there, needing at least 35% of the materials to be local. Apple has now promised to invest $1 billion, which includes setting up a factory for AirTags. This is much more than their earlier offers of $10 million and $100 million, which Indonesia turned down.
“I strongly believe it will resolve very, very soon,” said Rosan Roeslani, Indonesia’s investment minister, in a Bloomberg TV interview in Davos. He hopes the issue will be sorted out in “one or two weeks.” He mentioned that there was some confusion about how the local content rules are calculated but thinks they’ve found a way around it.
Indonesia is a big market for Apple, with over 280 million people using around 354 million phones. Apple has been running developer academies there since 2018, but so far, there’s no Apple factory in the country.