Chinese Government ends Apple Imports

Security concerns in China have compelled the government to remove all Apple iPads and Macbook laptops from the government’s procurement lists. The news was released by few government officials on the condition of anonymity.

In the procurement list released this July 2014, ten of Apple’s products were not marked. These included iPad, iPad mini, Macbook Air and Macbook Pro. The information is still not made public. The officials said that other American products including Dell Inc, Hewlett Packard Co and the Lenovo group are still on the list.

According to the Ministry of Finance China’s website, Apple did not make it as either of the two winning bidders to provide desktop and laptop computers to the Chinese government. The contracts instead went to the Chinese company Tsinghua Tongfang Co and Lenovo.

The news has still not been officially released and therefore it is still unknown whether iPhones have been removed from the procurement list too. In addition, this act has also raised security concerns among other countries concerning import of foreign IT products.

According to a TV program on a Chinese national channel, iPhones if used by government officials could threaten security of the country. Fang Xingdong, the founder of Chinalabs.com (a high tech think tank) called for a ban on the usage of iPhones by civil servants.

As a result, in May 2014, Chinese government started to vet major IT products and services that were being used by the government and other public entities. They then banned the use of Windows 8 on any platform in a pursuit for national security. Subsequently it has now also banned Symantec and Kaspersky (Software developers) and eventually these Apple products discussed above.

This ban of IT products will highly impact the value of Apple in the stock market and on a bigger picture, the ban will also impact the American GDP.