Re:Did Australia Poke a Hole in Your Phone’s Security?
by brandonjm on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @06:16PM
(#18973748)
> There would be short-term blowback about it and that would pass in a matter of weeks.
They could potentially stop selling software products and disable service access entirely.
What if all customer photos on iCloud become inaccessible, all iTunes and App purchases become inaccessible and OS updates stop. Then Apple stores shut down, customer support or repairs become unavailable, thousands of jobs are lost. I feel like the blowback would last much longer than a few weeks.
That's an extreme response, but if Apple really wanted to get the point across they can easily include it alongside any other threatening proposals.
Re:Did Australia Poke a Hole in Your Phone’s Security?
by tracker1 on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @06:28PM
(#18973893)
I would think if Apple, Google and Samsung all walked away from the Australian market together, they'd get the message.
Re:Did Australia Poke a Hole in Your Phone’s Security?
by incompatible on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @06:33PM
(#18973947)
I doubt that a typical large company would give up even ~1.7% of its revenue just out of principle. It can also say that "obeying Australian law" is a perfectly good principle. The Australian government has also kindly offered to reimburse the financial costs of complying.
I suspect Apple can trivially walk away from Australia as a market if they think it's for a very good cause. It won't be a huge hit, it's a small hit (~1.7% of annual global iPhone sales).
Australia is worth maybe $6-$7 billion per year in total sales to Apple. They sell about four million iPhones per year there (9.2m smartphones sold last year, Apple has 44% of the market), then throw in Macs, iPads, watches and services.
It's an affluent market and it would suck to give it up, as it'd be very difficult to regain the market share afterward. I'd worry that the reality would be that easy product substitution would make the move meaningless in terms of benefiting Australians (even though it would still be an important moral stand for Apple to take). There would be short-term blowback about it and that would pass in a matter of weeks.