Apple’s relationship with China has never been an easy one. Indeed, I wrote a piece a couple of years ago arguing that the company was in a no-win position in the country.
Apple’s only option of taking the moral high ground would be to pull out of the country altogether – as Google did for a time, after refusing to allow its search results to be censored by the government.
But Apple is in a very different position today than was Google in 2010. While Google had big ambitions within the country, it was not dependent on the market. Apple very much is. Not just because China is the largest smartphone market in the world – and as important to Apple as the whole of Europe – but because it is the iPhone maker’s key manufacturing base. Without China, it literally couldn’t make its products.
Things today are even worse…
more…
