Apple Inc (AAPL)

[Investors3]

China CCP bans Apple iPhone use for government officials at work
Wednesday, September 6, 2023 11:26 am

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) banned officials at central government agencies in China from using Apple iPhones and other foreign-branded devices for work or bringing them into the office.

Yoko Kubota for The Wall Street Journal:

The directive is the latest step in Beijing’s campaign to cut reliance on foreign technology and enhance cybersecurity, and comes amid a campaign to limit flows of sensitive information outside of China’s borders.

The move by Beijing could have a chilling effect for foreign brands in China, including Apple. Apple dominates the high-end smartphone market in the country and counts China as one of its biggest markets, relying on it for about 19% of its overall revenue.

It wasn’t clear how widely the orders were being distributed, but similar messages were communicated to employees at some central government regulators.

Beijing has for years restricted government officials at some agencies from using iPhones for work, but the order has now been widened, the people said. The latest order also signals an intensified effort by Beijing to ensure its rules are strictly enforced.

MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last November:
?
In 2016, Apple’s “Operations Genius,” Tim Cook, secretly signed a secret agreement with the human rights-abusing Chinese Communist Party estimated to be worth more than $275 billion. Cook promised that Apple would do its part to develop China’s economy and technological prowess via infrastructure investments, business deals, and worker training in exchange for the CCP quashing its surge of what promised to be crippling regulatory actions against Apple, The Information reported last December.
?
Many years before that, some two decades ago, it was Cook who spearheaded Apple’s move to make products “Designed in California,” but “Assembled in China.”
?
Since Cook, 62, made his $275 billion secret deal with the CCP five years ago, and as he now nears retirement age, Apple has made precious little headway in diversifying its production away from capricious, authoritarian China.
?
Why?

If the $275 billion wasn’t to buy Apple half a decade to free itself by diversifying its production away from China, mitigating risk, what was it for?
?
Longtime Apple analyst Gene Munster [in November 2022] estimated that it would take as long as a decade for Apple to reduce its current near-total reliance on China to meaningful levels.
?
At the current rate, it doesn’t look like Apple has 10 months, much less 10 years to extricate itself from China.
?
Tim Cook painted Apple into this corner. It worked marvelously well, until it didn’t.
?
A publicly traded company CEO’s job is to act in the best interest of its shareholders.
?
But, Apple’s operations don’t scream “genius” today. They scream “RISK!” But, you know, the market just loooves risk.

Apple shareholders and, in turn, Apple’s rubber-stamping Board of Lackeys, should hold one person responsible if this spiraling China dilemma continues deteriorate: Timothy D. Cook.
?
So, what’s Cook’s plan for getting the company out of this boxed-in predicament into which he placed it? Certainly Apple shareholders have a right to know. Hopefully, Cook has a better plan than simply cashing out and dumping this nightmarish quandary into the lap of Apple’s next CEO.
?
See also: Tim Cook firmly latched Apple onto China’s CCP teat. What’s his plan for weaning it off? – November 2, 2022

https://macdailynews.com/2023/09/06/china-ccp-bans-apple-iphone-use-for-government-officials-at-work/#google_vignette