India security plan may damage iPhone user experience

India security plans may damage the iPhone user experience

It had felt like a few more hours than usual since the last India-related Apple story, though this one may be slightly less good news, as it seems India wants smartphone OS manufacturers to unbundle apps from the operating system.

India wants unbundling of key services

Reuters reports India’s IT ministry is considering new rules as part of an attempt to protect against spying and abuse of user data on the part of smartphone manufacturers.

The report suggests Apple, Samsung and other smartphone makers have already engaged in closed door meetings with India’s lawmakers over these proposals. While it isn’t clear if these rules will go ahead, the report does say India will give manufacturers one year’s notice before they come into effect.

“Pre-installed apps can be a weak security point and we want to ensure no foreign nations, including China, are exploiting it. It’s a matter of national security,” it cites an official as saying. Relations between China and India are tense since a 2020 border skirmish between the two nuclear powers.

Uninstall everything?

What the proposals mean is that smartphone makers would need to offer an Uninstall option for bundled apps.

When it comes to Apple, this is thought to extend to core apps such as Photos or Safari.

Manufacturers will also be required to submit new devices for security testing by India’s Bureau of Indian standards agency and get software updates tested at the same agency. Testing can take up to 21-weeks, which would dramatically delay product launches.

Manufacturers will rightly point out that some of these apps, such as the camera app, are vital to the mobile experience, and surely hope to convince the government to agree this distinction.

A threat to digital supply chains

But what to my mind is most worrying about these proposals is the extent to which they threaten digital supply chains. After all, while it seems fine to take positive steps to secure OS ecosystems, the challenge in doing so is that you end up with a situation in which an OS in one nation may work very differently than it does in the nation next door.

The potential of state-mandated incompatibility also looms, and this could be seen as being a threat to the standards that pin the entire digital ecosystem together.

After all, if you consider Apple’s Calendar app, while that’s on the surface an app like any other app, it’s also an expression of work the operating system is already doing to make the information it contains available to other apps on those systems. At what point does that system level work become impacted by these proposals and is there much point in forcing manufacturers to separate the background tasks from the user interface. Users can already choose an alternative calendar app.

Does it impact Made In India?

The other concern is the potential 21-week delay before products ship.

Given Apple intends increasing iPhone production in India, this could do a lot of damage to production schedules and secrecy. Apple will not want to see new product launches delayed in this way as it prepares to make them in India.

I guess we have to hope cooler heads prevail and manufacturers can succeed in pointing out that if these rules are not tweaked then they may threaten the Made In India strategy the nation has already spent huge wads of cash to nurture.

We’ll see what happens, I guess, but clearly doing business in India means manufacturers must expect a few surprises along the road.

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