The rumors of a few days ago about a possible ban for iPhones in China have had great prominence on the web. China is a significant market for Apple for revenue, so the possibility that the state hand could influence the numbers of iPhones in China has not only caused chatter on the web, but also the repercussions on the value of Apple on the stock exchange. And the denials, which also come from the East, were not judged convincing enough by investors to raise Apple’s value on the stock exchange.
It is true that the fall of the Apple stock for the moment has stopped, but at present there are not even signs of rising: the value of an Apple share has remained about the same as last week, despite the new iPhone 15 and 15 Pro of Tuesday’s event and, in fact, the denials on the Chinese ban. Which evidently do not convince, we said. The first was from China Mobile, confirmed that this year it will offer iPhones to the Chinese, the latest is from a spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry, Mao Ning, who, reports the New York Times, was quite poor in details.
Ning said the Chinese administration has passed “no laws or regulations” prohibiting the purchase or use of foreign smartphones, including Apple-branded smartphones. The spokeswoman’s brief statement comes after the Wall Street Journal uncovered the Chinese government’s ban on state officials, who could no longer use or even bring iPhones to the office for national security reasons. A few days later, Bloomberg added that Beijing’s fears could extend the ban to officials of state-owned companies.
In the following days, reconstructs the New York Times, notices also appeared online delivered to public employees asking them to use smartphones of Chinese companies, not foreign. And although Chinese censorship is usually very quick to remove traces of this kind of information from the web, many of those concerning restrictions on foreign consumer electronics are still in place, which could indicate that Xi Jinping and his followers do not mind the media tam-tam that springs from rumors. founded or not.
White House spokesman John F. Kirby also intervened in the past few hours on the alleged ban on iPhones: the American administration, he said, is carefully observing the evolution of the story, and expects China “to be more transparent about what it decides to do”. Overseas, they are trying to clarify whether the ban against Huawei was too soft, so it should be tightened. To have sent the US into a rage is the Huawei Mate 60 series with its 5G connectivity, technology to which Huawei and its Chinese partners would not have been able to access precisely because of the ban.
