Apple's Tim Cook says Indian operations to use all-green energy within 6 months

More details have emerged from Sunday's encounter between Apple CEO Tim Cook and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during which Cook reportedly revealed he expects Apple's Indian operations to run entirely off renewable energy by the end of 2017.

The transition should happen within the next six months, Reuters quoted Cook as saying, based on a source familiar with Sunday's corporate roundtable. Cook and 20 other executives — such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Google's Sundar Pichai — met with Modi in Washington, D.C.

Cook also claimed that Apple has generated 740,000 jobs in India by way of the "app economy," and that local developers have produced almost 100,000 apps.

The CEO likely needs Modi's favor, since Apple has only just begun assembly in India and may want further tax concessions. The company has also yet to get approval for retail stores in the country, something contingent on local sourcing abilities.

Modi has championed a program called "Make in India," designed to spur local manufacturing. This has drawn concerns from some foreign multinationals, though it's unknown if Apple has resisted to any degree.

The company has been pursuing a global green energy strategy regardless of Indian politics, aiming to use renewable sources wherever possible. This includes nudging suppliers towards green power, or at least offsetting some of their environmental impact.

24 Comments

anantksundaram 20390 comments · 18 Years

About 7 years ago

Looks like Apple is setting renewable the bar again, this time for Indian companies (and its competitors in India). They did the same in the US. Then China. Now India. The company's goal is to create 4GW of generation capacity to make its entire value-chain renewable by 2020.

gmgravytrain 884 comments · 8 Years

I don't quite understand why Apple is going all out in India. Apple is going to get very little back from the Indian consumer. I believe 98% of the Indian consumer population are going to be happily buying $100 Android smartphones, so Samsung, the Chinese and local Indian brands are going to be getting most of the smartphone business. The news media is going to be poking fun at Apple for only having such a tiny percentage of smartphone market share and will be loudly jeering about how Apple has massively failed to win the hearts and minds of Indian consumers. It just seems as though Apple is wasting time and effort and nearly no one but a few Apple employees in India will care whether they make iPhones in India using renewable energy or not. Apple will again set the bar for renewable energy but it's a thankless task and mostly unappreciated.

Soli 9981 comments · 9 Years

This is horrible. Apple is singlehandedly killing the coal industry. When the sun goes behind the clouds of it's night time all work has to stop. Such stupidity¡

gmgravytrain said:

I don't quite understand why Apple is going all out in India. Apple is going to get very little back from the Indian consumer. I believe 98% of the Indian consumer population are going to be happily buying $100 Android smartphones, so Samsung, the Chinese and local Indian brands are going to be getting most of the smartphone business. The news media is going to be poking fun at Apple for only having such a tiny percentage of smartphone market share and will be loudly jeering about how Apple has massively failed to win the hearts and minds of Indian consumers. It just seems as though Apple is wasting time and effort and nearly no one but a few Apple employees in India will care whether they make iPhones in India using renewable energy or not. Apple will again set the bar for renewable energy but it's a thankless task and mostly unappreciated.

India is a longterm plan. They can't get lower costs in India without being present in India. Also, by helping build India's economy and making "affordable" luxury items Apple will be well positioned to generate large profits from a virtually untapped market. Remember when people said that the Chinese were too poor to afford iPhones? Now, we can debate how fast or even if India will grow in the same way China did, but even if it doesn't there's still huge benefits to labor costs that are being diminished in China. No matter what happens this is smart move by Apple.

shapetables 201 comments · 10 Years

AppleInsider said:

The CEO likely needs Modi's favor, since Apple has only just begun assembly in India and may want further tax concessions. The company has also yet to get approval for retail stores in the country, something contingent on local sourcing abilities.

When KFC started in India, Indians violently rioted in front of the unopened franchises yelling "Just the chips not the chicks!". When the soda firms tried to start distribution, their prime minister scolded that India was quite capable of making and selling its own exorbitantly priced sugar water. Now the smartphone vendors are coming and they are forced to open factories [before they will be allowed to trade goods for money with Indian consumers]. Nuclear-capable India has also rejected the Non-Proliferation Treaty on the grounds that it is more restrictive on states other than the original five --the ultimate in protectionism. So there's little doubt that Trump and Modi discussed America's plan to curtail abuse of the loopholes in the H1B system that have already created an entire class of "indentured tech servants" so large that it now accounts for over 9% of India's GDP. It also stands to reason that Modi's subsequent visit with American industrial leaders probably underscored the economic consequences in store for companies that don't resist their country's new agenda [to fill as many American jobs as possible with patriots that will spend and invest in, raise families in and even die for America].