Apple plays safe, disables iOS news app in China

While roaming on his phone, Salibra has found out that Apple chose to disable news app support for China.

In the United States, we take access to the Internet for granted.

Still, even if the company is moving carefully to appease the government, the move is already troubling a few users. These may seem like whimsical examples, but the implication is a limited flow of accurate first-hand information. That means that news that citizens from around the globe who travel to China can read is being censored-not by the Chinese government, but by Apple itself.

This comes as a surprise, since China is the Cupertino-based manufacturer’s second largest market, immediately after the United States, with sales reaching $13 billion annually. The user, business owner Larry Salibra, blogged that according to his testing, Apple’s news app stopped working when he was connected to a mobile network on the mainland but became functional again when he was connected to a Hong Kong network.

Experts said China was apparently exploiting the geolocation service present in all iOS devices to assist local Chinese cellular providers block access to Apple’s News app. The censorship only prevents access to Apple News within China.

China has proven to be a hard market for many tech companies partly due to the Beijing’s restrictions on content available to people in the country.

Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) users have raised their concerns about such arbitrary blocks of genuine news content, based on political whims and objections. This could be why the company is taking a very conservative approach in delivering new content, such as what can be seen in the Apple News app, within the country.

“On device censorship is much different than having your server blocked by the Great Firewall or not enabling a feature for customers with certain country iTunes account”, his post continued. It’s unclear whether the app is temporarily disabled while Apple figures out how to enact that system, or finished permanently to avoid any entanglements with the country’s ruling party. In the meantime, the Chinese authorities have implemented strict censorship laws that restrict the info that can be accessed within the region’s borders, hence services like Google’s search engine has been blocked.