Agreeing to all the whims and fancies of western companies is something governments should never do. In my view free market is propaganda by these companies to

Agreeing to all the whims and fancies of western companies is something governments should never do. In my view free market is propaganda by these companies to make these kinds of restrictions feel dirty. Before you attack me, hear me out. China has many such restrictions on many such products. China blocked out internet and internet companies, which resulted in home grown products emerging and becoming really successful (alibaba, tencent, baidu, didi etc). Indian government did not put any such restriction on virtual products. This has resulted in Google, facebook and microsoft having literal monopoly on the market. There are some restrictions for companies like Amazon and Uber. This has resulted in a healthy local competition and ecosystem to develop and compete with international competition like Uber and Amazon. In the end, some of these local companies won't survive independently and got bought by international players. This, in my view, is a much better outcome as this makes international players to entrench heavily and invest in the local market. Lets look at telecom, banks and airlines. Govt discouraged entry of foreign players into Indian markets by making rules of entry tighter. This has resulted in companies like Airtel, Idea, Reliance and Tata to become strong players in telecom. Believe me, Indian telecom sector has lowest tariff in the world and has really huge reach with more than 850mn subscribers. These companies have innovated and made sure that global competition did not kill them. Sure some companies got bought by likes of Vodafone. However, companies like Airtel managed to go global. In banks, none of the foreign players have managed to pickup any significant market share in view of healthy competition by private Indian banks like HDFC and ICICI. In airlines, again, government disallowed foreign players. They have to be content with buying large chunks of really successful Indian homegrown players. Lets look at mobile phone market. Indian government did not put a barrier for phones to be imported. They just blocked second hand phones by slapping a large anti dumping duty. This has resulted in virtually zero production of these mobile phones. With more than 400 mn smartphone users, who lost by letting big smartphone makers to import ? No Indian homegrown industry, no ecosystem. All they managed to do is to make sure all these phones where new and not refurbished. I strongly believe that big countries like India, should have some sort of protectionism in the infancy stage of an industry. When you have strong local competition, only then these markets should be opened up for global competition. If the local competition that has managed to sprout is capable it will ward off global competition and establish a healthy equilibria. If not, global competition would rule the market and that should be fine. Point being, give local ecosystem a chance. By letting Apple sell second hand phones, India would open itself up to be dumping ground of the world. Soon enough all end of life phones would end up in India masquerading as refubrished.