14 DAY TRIAL // American press is convinced that Chinese reports are not actually about Apple, but about the NSA tracking anyone, including foreign citizens.
The Wall Street Journal says that the Chinese State Television Network, China Central Television, has something against "frequent locations," a function within iOS 7 which records the time, location and users' movement. The Chinese media report included opinions expressed by local researchers that believe that this function that lies in all recent iPhone models could tell the US Government anything that they need to know about China's economy and "even state secrets."
As usual, Apple did not respond to this, but the official information on their website presents tracking as a useful feature in a lot of apps, that provides efficient travel routes and location related perks. With iOS, however, the tracking features can be turned off by the user, so there's no need to worry about someone tracking your location unless you want to.
Apple has recently been left on the 6th place after other smartphone vendors in China, but their revenues are rising to almost 10 billion US Dollars per financial quarter.
The report says that Apple's devices got to high ranked government officials in China and that may pose a treat to national security.
The Wall Street Journal recalls that the State television's reports do not reflect the opinion of state officials, but they are influential among the people of the country. Last year, for example, Tim Cook had to apologize to the Chinese people because the CCTV accused Apple of discriminating against them in its warranty policies.
The Cupertino, California-based tech giant has most of its manufacturing partners in China. Foxconn and Pegatron employ tens of thousands of Chinese people to make the iPhone and other great-selling devices.
Apple has not had any luck lately in China. A few days ago, the company lost a law suit filed by a local company that says Apple infringed one of their patents for speech recognition when it created Siri. Apple took that to court, but its claim was dismissed. Now the Chinese company has the right to sue Apple and get a small percentage of the iPhone sales in China or discuss this with Apple and agree on some reasonable terms to close this deal outside a Court House.
On the other hand, Apple is losing money because of the manufacturers' employees who keep smuggling iPhone parts. That is the main reason we have an idea how the next-gen iPhone 6 will look two months before its launch.