An Apple Store in Beijing. Facing a slowdown in sales of iPhones in the United States,
Apple is looking to China for growth. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times
Posted on 04/22/2016 12:11:55 PM PDT by Swordmaker
For years, there has been a limit to the success of American technology companies in China. Capture too much market share or wield too much influence, and Beijing will push back.
Apple has largely been an exception to that trend. Yet the Silicon Valley company is now facing a regulatory push against its services in China that could signal its good relations in the country may be turning.
Last week, Apple’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movies were shut down in China, just six months after they were started there. Initially, Apple apparently had the government’s approval to introduce the services. But then a regulator, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, asserted its authority and demanded the closings, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Frigging Chicoms. Screw ‘em
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What will the cheap labor express do now when this cascades to manufacturing?
China will sing a different tune when Trump takes office.
Apple Suspends Online Book and Movie Services in China -- Update April 22, 2016, 08:33:00 AM EDT By Dow Jones Business NewsRead more: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/apple-suspends-online-book-and-movie-services-in-china--update-20160422-00333#ixzz46aJxjK6H
By Eva Dou
BEIJING--China has shut down Apple Inc.'s online book and movie services in the country, suggesting an intensifying campaign to bring Web content in line with Beijing's stringent guidelines for traditional media.
The shutdown has sent shockwaves through the U.S. high-tech sector, which has long seen Apple as a China success story. The brand's popularity in China has helped it maintain strong growth there in the past two years, even as Beijing's buy-local push has crimped sales for many U.S. electronics makers.
"We hope to make books and movies available again to our customers in China as soon as possible," the company said in a statement.
The case highlights the challenges of navigating China, where laws are often vaguely worded and only clarified much later. In last week's meetings with Apple, officials pointed to broad new rules issued in February that ban companies with any foreign ownership from engaging in online publishing, one of the people familiar with the talks said.
They also cited a 2008 provision that requires companies to get a license to broadcast videos on the Internet and limits license eligibility to Chinese companies, the person said. People in China's entertainment industry have long wondered why this provision hadn't prevented Apple from operating its movie service in China.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to say what Chinese licenses the company holds and how it hopes to restart its book and movie services. The regulator didn't respond to a faxed request for comment.
China has been seeking control over new-media formats similar to its control over traditional media. China's President Xi Jinping summoned regulators and technology-industry executives to Beijing on Monday to call for tighter Internet regulation. The Chinese Communist Party's leading mouthpiece, the People's Daily, said in an editorial this week that regulators must scrutinize new media more strictly as its influence grows.
Industry insiders say other U.S. technology companies are assessing whether they could face a similar crackdown.
"It's a big and successful pattern for regulators to claim big targets at the outset and scare everybody else," said one Beijing-based lawyer. "Apple won't be the only one."
The suspension appeared to have taken Apple by surprise. The company still lists a Beijing-based "Studio Relations" job on its website. "The key responsibility is to grow iTunes' movie business in Greater China," reads the posting, dated Dec. 22.
The setback is a rarity for Apple, which has been one of the most surefooted U.S. tech companies in China. Microsoft Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. were targets of antitrust investigations in China last year, and Beijing continues to block the websites of Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. Makers of enterprise equipment like Cisco Systems Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. have faced a sales chill in China since Edward Snowden's disclosures of U.S. National Security Agency spying.
By contrast, Apple's revenue from Greater China--which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan--was up 84% in the fiscal year ended Sept. 26, compared with 16% globally. Greater China is its second-largest market, accounting for a quarter of its global sales.
There have been hitches, such as in 2014, when state broadcaster China Central Television called the iPhone a " national security risk" because of a feature that can track user locations. Apple said a day later it "appreciated" CCTV's having raised the issue, and added that it didn't have access to user locations.
That year Apple moved Chinese customers' data onshore to a facility operated by China Telecom, saying the data was encrypted and not accessible by China Telecom.
In contrast with Apple's very public battle with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation over the bureau's request for help in unlocking an iPhone, the company' disputes with the Chinese government have largely been behind closed doors. In a rare statement on the subject, Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell testified before a U.S. legislative committee this week that the company had refused a request from the Chinese government to provide source code.
Alyssa Abkowitz, Lilian Lin and Yang Jie contributed to this article.
Its not just “chicoms” - it is China’s 5000 top-down centralized, statist rule. The Communists have just become the new Emperors.
China wants absolute control over its borders - in the past, that meant people and armies, but now that also includes information, technology, labor, production, news, social trends, etc... from the outside.
I am not anti-China, but its also why “free trade” with China is an impossibility, at least in the American laissez-faire sense.
Yep, and it is also the reason I've warmed to Trump now that he has demonstrated that he understands the difference between China and Japan.
That was my very first thought.
Brickify all Apple devices in China.
Apple was wonged!
So, the communist-led Chinese government can’t be trusted to keep their word? Who knew! Apple is getting it’s just desserts for dealing with those scumbags and screwing Americans over in the process...eff them both
Google?
Yes, google too
Uh-oh, all is not happy in Apple commie-land. Somebody didn’t get their payoff.
Ignorance is a terrible thing. So, in the spirit of enlightenment, I will attempt to educate you. Apple does not engage China to build thier products, they engage "factories" named Hon-Hai (Foxconn), Quanta and others.
To call these "factories" is poor phrase, as we don't really have a word in the english language to describe these "city/factories". Consider a "factory" with 230,000 - 450,000 workers. That's a small city, with 230-450K peole, living, working and building products at a single site! We have NOTHING to compare it agsinst in the USA. A city/factory where people sign 6+ month contracts and live/sleep/eat and work around the clock, live in dorms, eat their meals at 24 hour cafererias, and wear uniforms provided by their employer. And people line up for hours to compete for these jobs.
Now, Apple is hardly the only company that Foxconn hires out to. But, Apple is the most public, the biggest fish in the barrel. Foxconn makes products for Dell Computers, IBM, Motorola, Samsung, Hewlet Packard, and pretty much every other company you can name. Funny, you never hear them listed AT ALL when something goes bad at one of these city/factories, do you? Yet, Apple is the ONLY one of the hundred of American companies that has gone on record about underage workers, about wages, about living conditions.
Can you name ONE other company that has done the same? Just one?
Major customers of Foxconn include or have included:
Acer Inc. (Taiwan)[52] Amazon.com (United States)[8] Apple Inc. (United States)[53] BlackBerry Ltd. (Canada)[54] Cisco (United States)[55] Dell (United States)[56] Google (United States)[57] Hewlett-Packard (United States)[58] Huawei (China)[59] InFocus (United States) Microsoft (United States)[60] Motorola Mobility (United States)[56] Nintendo (Japan)[61] Nokia (Finland)[53][62] Sony (Japan)[63] Toshiba (Japan)[64] Vizio (United States)[65] Xiaomi (China)[66 Source
Thanks for the lesson, Hodar; how does it change my comment in any way? In the future please keep your condescending attitude to yourself.
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