China comes after the United States as Apple's second largest market of Apple products. To retain its hold on the Chinese market, Apple is careful to deliver new content and censors the Apple News app in China.
Gizmodo reported that much of Apple's revenue comes from Greater China, making it the second largest market for Apple. The reported figure of Apple sales in China reached up to more than $13 billion in the third quarter of the year.
To maintain its access to the Chinese market, Apple is careful to bringing new content that will not raise doubts from the Chinese government. As a result, Apple decided to censor its own News app in China.
According to a report by Quartz, users from other countries who travel to China and are connected to any Chinese telecommunications networks cannot access news content in the Apple News app. The censorship of the Apple News app was voluntarily done by Apple, not by the Chinese government.
The report stated that three Apple customers encountered an error when trying to open Apple News in China. The error message said that the Apple News app is not supported "in the current region". One of the users, however, said that he could access Apple News on iPad by using a different VPN.
User Larry Salibra is worried about the Apple News censorship. On a Reddit post, he said: "What make me uncomfortable is them enforcing rules of other countries on my device which I didn't buy in that country even when I've turned off location services. It bothers me not because Apple does it, but because they have no option but to do it and it is only going to get worse."
The Apple News censorship in China means that Chinese users will not be able to experience the Apple News app's features and content for the meantime. In an earlier report by VCPost, it was stated that Apple News is the replacement to the previous Newsstand app.
The report also claimed that Apple News promises to bring a new way of reading news to its users, in a manner quite similar to Flipboard. The app allows downloading journalism content for offline reading and sharing or browsing news articles.
The Apple News app is available only for users in the US, UK, and Australia. It can be accessed from other countries as long as it was downloaded from the UK, Australia, or US App Store.
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