Apple has agreed to comply with some of the requirements in China’s proposal on anti-terrorism and cybersecurity despite criticism by U.S. President Barack Obama last week.
Want China Times reported that China has asked foreign tech companies to set up backdoors for their products and allow the encryption keys used to secure user data to be stored in Chinese servers to provide authorities access.
Obama, in a reports in the U.S.-based online news resource Quartz, had directly expressed concern to President Xi Jinping and asked Chinese officials to change their ways if they want to do business with the United States.
Many U.S.-based tech companies, among them Apple and Intel, have built extended partnership with China; and Apple has already consented to China's new rules on cybersecurity, although it has not yet issued an official statement regarding the issue.
Some analysts say that Apple's decision to give Beijing permission and access to the source code for the iPhone, other devices and services would potentially enable the authorities to secretly collect information on users, whether outside or inside the country.
But Apple had already started to store iPhone users' data in China to its servers last summer. Other foreign tech firms, however, remained distrustful, thinking of the effects of complying with China's rule.
Apple has posted the highest single-quarter revenue in China in the fourth quarter last year, amounting to about $16.1 billion.
Other than Apple, Intel has announced on March 5, Thursday, that it will extend partnership with Huawei in the cloud-computing sector. The two firms have been partners in the industry since 2012.