China

Within the past four years, Apple has managed to "dramatically reduce" the rate of iPhone-related repair fraud in its retail stores in China, according to The Information's Wayne Ma. The report is based on interviews with more than a dozen former Apple employees who spoke on condition of anonymity. Image: iFixit In 2013, Apple is said to have discovered a highly sophisticated fraud scheme in...

Apple's top security chief told the U.S. Congress on Sunday that it had found no indication of suspicious transmissions or other evidence that its China supply chain was ever compromised (via Reuters). In a letter to the Senate and House commerce committees, Apple Vice President for Information Security George Stathakopoulos wrote that the company had repeatedly investigated and found no...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security today said it has "no reason to doubt" the companies who denied a bombshell Bloomberg Businessweek report this week about Chinese spies using a tiny chip to infiltrate U.S. companies. Homeland Security's full statement:The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the media reports of a technology supply chain compromise. Like our partners in the...

Apple's efforts to thoroughly deny this week's bombshell Bloomberg Businessweek report now extend to a former top executive. Apple's former general counsel Bruce Sewell Apple's recently retired general counsel Bruce Sewell told Reuters he called the FBI's then-general counsel James Baker last year after being told by Bloomberg of an open investigation into Supermicro, and was told that nobody ...

The United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre has backed Apple's and Amazon's denials of a Bloomberg Businessweek report that claimed Chinese spies planted tiny chips the size of a pencil tip on motherboards manufactured by Supermicro, which both Apple and Amazon used at one time in data center servers. "We are aware of the media reports but at this stage have no reason to doubt the...

Apple has gone to unusual lengths to thoroughly and definitively refute a Bloomberg Businessweek article that today suggested Chinese spies had planted microchips in the Chinese-made Supermicro server motherboards that Apple uses in its facilities. Following the publishing of the article, Apple released a strongly worded statement calling Businessweek's report inaccurate with no evidence to...

Bloomberg Businessweek today reports that around three years ago, the Chinese military began inserting microchips on Supermicro server motherboards while they were being manufactured in China, providing the Chinese government with a stealth doorway into any network that used the tampered hardware. The report cites an official who said investigators found the attack eventually affected nearly ...

Apple today confirmed it has removed "many" illegal gambling apps, and developers distributing them, from its App Store in China. The Wall Street Journal:"Gambling apps are illegal and not allowed on the App Store in China," Apple said in a statement Monday. "We have already removed many apps and developers for trying to distribute illegal gambling apps on our App Store, and we are vigilant in ...

Apple is working with major mobile carriers in China on exploring ways to reduce iMessage spam, according to state media (via Reuters). The company is actively exploring ways to further cut spam messages, including using advanced technology to identify junk messages and rolling out more tools to block hostile accounts, an Apple official was quoted as saying by the China News Service. "We've ...

China-based BOE Technology Group is stepping up its bid to become an OLED panel supplier for Apple's future smartphones, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. BOE is the world's top producer of large liquid crystal screens and already makes displays for Apple's iPads and MacBooks, but the firm now has its sights set on the lucrative OLED panel market. The earliest BOE...

Apple's Chinese iCloud operator has agreed a deal with state-owned China Telecom to transfer local customer data to the company's Tianyi cloud storage business, according to TechCrunch. China Telecom reportedly announced the agreement in a WeChat post, saying that local Apple partner Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD) had migrated all Chinese iCloud customer data to Tianyi servers. Apple separately ...

Apple today announced the launch of a $300 million investment fund in China which is designed to connect Apple's suppliers with renewable energy sources. Apple, along with 10 initial suppliers, is investing $300 million into the China Clean Energy Fund over the course of the next four years. Apple says the fund will invest in and develop clean energy projects totaling more than 1 gigawatt of...

Apple quietly fixed a bug in iOS 11 that caused some devices to crash when the word "Taiwan" was entered in a text field or the Taiwan emoji was used, according to a security researcher (via Axios). Digita Security's Patrick Wardle outlined in a blog post how the glitch in iOS 11.3 caused instant crashes on a variety of native and third-party iPhone and iPad apps, including iMessages,...

A pair of reports out this morning highlight Apple's ongoing struggles in India and China ahead of the company's Q2 2018 earnings results coming tomorrow, May 1. Within India, Apple has been dethroned as the country's top selling high-end smartphone maker in the January-March period, losing out to Samsung. Specifically looking at India's "premium price segment" (devices priced above 30,000...

A group of criminals in China were caught smuggling 500 million yuan ($79.8 million) worth of refurbished iPhones from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, using drones connected via cables to transport the smartphones. Reported by the Legal Daily (via Reuters), customs officers in Shenzhen caught the group and ceased its illegal actions, arresting 26 total suspects in the process. Photo by Liu ...

Today marks the official transfer of Apple's Chinese iCloud services from a hosting location in the United States to servers owned and operated by state-run Chinese company Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD) (via CNN). With the move, all Chinese users' iCloud accounts will now be hosted on GCBD's servers, along with the iCloud encryption keys needed to unlock an iCloud account. Apple made the...

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RWB/RSF) has urged journalists using iCloud in China to migrate away from Apple's cloud service this month, before control of their data is handed over to a Chinese company (via Hong Kong Free Press). Beginning February 28, Apple's iCloud services in mainland China will be operated by Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data (GCBD), which is owned by the Guizhou...

Alipay, the mobile payment system offered by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, will soon be accepted in Apple retail stores across China, making it the first third-party mobile payment system to be accepted at brick-and-mortar Apple stores anywhere in the world (via Reuters). The partnership with Apple was announced in a statement on Wednesday by Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial, which runs...

Apple is planning to build a second data center in China, with an operation date set for 2020 and location in Ulanqab City, according to a report today by Xinhua Net (via Reuters). Located in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the second center is said to provide various iCloud services for users on the Chinese mainland. Plans are for the center to run on 100 percent renewable...

Apple's iPhone 7 Plus was the second best-selling smartphone in China last year and outperformed iPhone 7 sales by some margin, according to new market research, suggesting price is not the only concern amongst Chinese consumers. Low-cost smartphones have dominated the Chinese market in recent years, while high-end devices from companies like Apple typically see low sales numbers in the...