China iPhone curbs reportedly extend to local government and state-owned businesses The ban on using iPhones in some central Chinese government agencies is reportedly more extensive than first chronicled by Tthe Wall Street Journal. Japan's Nikkei last Friday reported that local governments and state-owned companies also frown upon their staff using iThings in the office. The Japanese outlet's report claims …
Any phone from a foreign company (i.e. including Samsung)
Apple is obviously taking the biggest hit though, since they have pretty decent market share in China. The thing that has spooked the stock market is that even if the referenced article suggests that a lot of Chinese will keep using their iPhones for personal use and use a Chinese made phone for work, is it could easily tip to a general distrust of Apple products. The Chinese people appear to have a lot more trust that their government is on their side than people in the US/UK/EU, so they might figure "well if my government doesn't trust iPhones why should I?" Or maybe they figure carrying two phones is too big of a hassle so they drop their iPhone and use their Chindroid as their one phone.
If that scenario plays out and Apple's sales in China crater, look for Apple's very minimal non-China production that's "just enough to meet India's home sourcing requirements and keep investors happy that they are on a slow path to production diversification" to quit slow walking move of production from China and announce an aggressive goal for moving their entire supply chain out of China.
There have been rumors that Apple has wanted to move a lot more production out of China, but has been afraid of this sort of action from China as a punishment for doing so - due to China's fears that Apple doing so may be seen as a bell cow by the rest of the tech industry that precipitates a mass exodus of western tech manufacturing. If the actions of China's government cause Apple's in country sales to evaporate, Apple no longer has any reason to continue manufacturing its products there. They would avoid a lot of risks associated with continuing to manufacture in China, like becoming a tariff pawn if the trade war further escalated, backlash from US consumers if China is seen as more of a pariah here (i.e. if they actually invaded Taiwan instead of just blustered) and so forth.
They would likely move a lot more to India, and to Vietnam as well (conveniently the US has just strengthened its diplomatic ties with Vietnam) though I imagine the long term goal would be to produce in North America, if/when production is automated to the point they don't need to recruit armies of workers to hand assemble everything.
Ban iOS but not the arguably less secure Android?
They are not banning iOS they are banning Apple devices. They are "banning Android" when it is included in a foreign phone like Samsung.
None of the Chinese Androids use Google's version of Android, they use the open source parts then put in their own replacements for Google's stuff like the Play Store, Search, and so forth. They are not worried about security bugs, they are worried about foreign control of the hardware/software though yes the theatre (tit for tat for the west's Huawei ban) is a large part of it.
We keep on banning things in the US because of "National Security" -- you may have forgotten, for example, that not only are Huawei and other smartphones banned from government facilities in the US but there's a 'rip and replace' for any of their communications equipment. It was only a matter of time before we got the same treatment from China. Whether or not these bans are justified is irrelevant.
....and, of course, whatever the US does the UK unquestioningly follows suit. Its always been this way for as long as I can remember.
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