Apple caved to China’s demands in order to grow the company because it likes money

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

China is the largest country in the world in terms of population and, as such, it has become one of the biggest markets in the world for Apple products. However, a new report shows that the company had to cave to certain demands in order to grow the company’s business in China.

Apple is known for holding its ground when it comes to issues of customer privacy. The company’s most recent software update contains changes that require apps to have complete transparency when it comes to data collection. But things are apparently different for Apple products in China.

According to a report from The New York Times, Apple was required to back away from some of its policies, in order to appease the Chinese government and grow the company’s business in China. The company’s major caving point was allowing all of its customer’s iCloud data to be stored locally in China, as opposed to in the United States.

Apple not only agreed to allow this data to be stored locally in China, but the company also gave access to this information to a government affiliated data-storage provider called the Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD). This differs greatly from the company’s previous practice, which sees Apple constantly fighting to keep user data completely private.

The major concern here is that Apple generally utilizes a certain encryption method to ensure that its data remains secure. iCloud data stored in China has not been confirmed to use the same type of encryption, so there is no way to know if that data is as secure as it needs to be.

This is a very interesting revelation. Apple has always been very firm about its privacy policies and keeping user data safe, but it seems like even the world’s biggest tech company must fold to China’s demands to unlock the country’s giant market. You can read more about The New York Times’ findings here.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Apple is bumping up Apple Music’s audio quality by adding spatial and lossless audio
• New Beats Studio earbuds might have been revealed thanks to Apple’s iOS 14.6 beta
• You can now catch a fully driverless taxi in one part of China
• China has a new train that can go a record-setting 385 mph