Apr 30, 2021. Updated: Apr 10, 2022.

"A Day in the Life of Your Data"

Recently, Apple released a document about data collection and user privacy and it has been inviting lot of praise. Most users feel that Apple is the only one among the GAFAM¹ that cares about digital privacy.

But I hope that users don't get a convoluted idea of Apple's interest in privacy. Their marketing persuades users to blindly trust Apple with user data, and therefore, it is necessary to explain what is happening — that judging by Apple's own actions, Apple does not truly care about user privacy.

There is a lot of talk in privacy forums that Apple is using privacy as a weapon against their competitors, that their privacy concern is just a card. These assertions are based on the following reasons—

1. Apple has been around since 1996 but it is only around 2020 that they started doing something about user privacy.
2. Apple products do track and collect user data despite of what their claim on treating privacy as a fundamental right.
3. Apple is expanding to services with subscription plans that follows a business model exploiting user data.

Now, especially given the last point, the question is, why is Apple playing the privacy card. My suspicion is that they are repositioning themselves.

Despite being the richest company in the world, they are loosing their ground in the hardware business. Their income was primarily from hardware sales coupled with their software. But since the last few years, sales of Apple hardware has been falling because

• most people have phones that aren't out dated and still serve them good, and
• because other manufacturers are able to match Apple's design and quality — some even exceeded it.

This calls for repositioning of the company and what better way to do that than providing what the digital consumers were asking for years — privacy.

I am sure they are working hard on hardware innovation, but privacy is how they are strengthening their software selling point. In the computing market of mobiles and computers, Apple is battling against Google who control about 80% of the mobile market with their Android OS, and Microsoft who control the PC market with their Windows OS. If you have to stand out against them, it would be by sporting something these companies have been refusing to — privacy.

The companies we generally complain about are Facebook and Google, who are notorious data abusers. Among them, Apple is like the one-eyed man who still exploits user data but because of the contrast principle, seems to be the good guy. Therefore, Apple can play the privacy card to differentiate and reposition itself in the market, especially against Google and Microsoft.

I am not surprised that people think Apple is the good guy, because Apple excels in marketing. In fact, Apple will benefit a lot from the legal case with Facebook as they will reinforce itself as a privacy respecting company. In a fight between a total scoundrel and a half scoundrel, the half scoundrel will always get the benefit of doubt and public support. This is the magic of perspectives.

What I would tell Apple users is this: do not blindly trust Apple with regard to your privacy because they seem to care about it only because it is profitably expediting for them at the moment; and when it comes to their services, they do collect user data and use it. Tomorrow if Apple finds a new weapon to build their uniqueness around, differentiate their products and reap larger profits, and if, for the new weapon to function optimally and reap profits, it requires Apple to compromise their privacy promise to customers, I believe that Apple will compromise. Apple has investor pressure to make money who invested on their business model which is not built on user privacy at all. Rather it is built on user data. So given such trade off, they will compromise on privacy for larger profits.

Nor can they they ride on the privacy card perpetually because there are other companies who care about user privacy in better ways that Apple do. For Apple their definition of privacy is to collect with consent, while for many others, it is about not collecting personal data at all, and they focus on creating technology that does not collect data at all. Soon Apple will be number 2 or lesser in the privacy domain, and they do not like being number 2. Also, respecting user privacy restricts Apple's profits because some of Apple products and services are dependent on user data.

The privacy card offers Apple breathing space, that's all.