China is Apple's second biggest market and an integral part of their supply chain. It will be very difficult for apple to say no when China demands this tech be sued to find thought crime.
Apple is one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world, and China is one of its most important markets. According to Apple's 2023 annual report, China accounted for 14.6% of its total revenue, or $42.5 billion, making it the third-largest region after the Americas and Europe. Apple also relies on China for its supply chain, as many of its products are manufactured or assembled by Chinese companies such as Foxconn and Lens Technology.
Obviously, Apple tolerates China's human rights abuses because of its financial interest and dependence on the Chinese market and suppliers.
Apple are beholden to China. Sure, China is a huge market for them but I think the bigger issue is manufacturing: if they piss China off they won’t have anything to sell, anywhere! I’m sure Apple execs know this and I hope they’re quickly planning to reduce, if not remove this dependency.
> Apple could choose to honor principles and not sell in China. But market share is more important.
They're a corporation, their sole ethic is "to make money," full stop, that is the only reason Apple exists. To ignore China as a market would cost them millions if not billions of dollars.
Tons of businesses with very ethical practices operate in and with China. China's current anti-privacy stances are unfortunate, but if we refuse to do business with them, all we're doing is giving a leg-up to Chinese corporations who don't even pretend to care about user privacy in the form of an insulated market.
How much of Apple's business is in China now? What about Amazon? Would Apple publicly deny these allegations to appease China so they can continue doing business there?
Apple seems cagey about its reputation with the Chinese government. Their balls are directly in the Chinese government's hands, they don't want to do anything that might make the government upset.
Beyond having their manufacturing there, it's also the biggest untapped market in the world.
Apple will probably actually end up losing a significant amount of money over this. They're likely to lose a lot of their market share in China, not because of any explicit government measures against them, but because Chinese people are getting angry at the American government's trade war against China, and will avoid prominent American brands. China has a massive internal market, similar in scale to the US or Europe, so losing out there is a significant blow to a company like Apple.
They are forced to by their hardware business model. Almost every entry point to the Apple ecosystem is through hardware and nobody can meet QC and scale of Chinese factories. Too much of a risk to block China and risk supply chain disruptions.
reply