China

In 2015 and 2016, Apple aggressively expanded its retail presence in China with 30 new stores, according to the Apple Storefronts tracker. Since the start of 2017, however, Apple has opened just five new locations in the country. Apple's newest store in China in Suzhou The Information's Wayne Ma has shared a report today that offers explanations for the slowdown, including China's...

Apple today said it is "urgently investigating" a report that claims Apple Watch manufacturer Quanta Computer has subjected teenage students to illegal work conditions at its factory in the Chinese city of Chongqing. "We are urgently investigating the report that student interns added in September are working overtime and night shifts," Apple said, in a statement issued to CNN. "We have zero ...

Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook called on Bloomberg to retract a highly controversial story suggesting Chinese spies planted microchips in the Supermicro server motherboards used in Apple's data facilities, saying there was no truth to Bloomberg's claims. Today, Supermicro Charles Liang joined Cook in calling for a retraction. In a statement shared by CNBC, Liang said that Supermicro has not...

For the first time since Bloomberg published a highly controversial story suggesting Chinese spies planted microchips in Supermicro server motherboards Apple used in its iCloud facilities, Apple CEO Tim Cook has gone on the record to vehemently deny the claims. In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Cook said there is "no truth" to the story about Apple, before making the unprecedented move of...

Apple has formally apologized to users in China over the hacking of some Chinese accounts in a series of phishing scams that hit the country last week. The successful phishing attacks used stolen Apple IDs to gain access to customer funds, leading to "a small number of...users' accounts" being accessed through these scams (via The Wall Street Journal). In a statement shared in China today,...

Russia-based cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab today said that while "hardware supply chain attacks are a reality," evidence suggests Bloomberg Businessweek's report about Chinese intelligence tampering with server motherboards manufactured by Apple's former supplier Supermicro is "untrue." Apple data center Kaspersky Lab said the report "should be taken with a grain of salt" in its 14-page ...

In a research note obtained by MacRumors, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said cumulative smartphone shipments from four major brands on the Chinese market, including Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi, declined 10 percent on a year-over-year basis during China's Golden Week, a national holiday and major sales period. iPhone XR in (PRODUCT)RED Kuo, writing on behalf of research firm TF International...

Rob Joyce, Senior Advisor for Cybersecurity Strategy at the NSA, is the latest official to question the accuracy of Bloomberg Businessweek's bombshell "The Big Hack" report about Chinese spies compromising the U.S. tech supply chain. "I have pretty good understanding about what we're worried about and what we're working on from my position. I don't see it," said Joyce, speaking at a U.S....

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...