Microsoft has told all its employees in China that they will soon only be allowed to use iPhones for work purposes. The ban on Android devices is part of a security-related Microsoft initiative for providing a unified way of managing and verifying employee identities.
The mandate, set to come into effect in September 2024, was announced in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News. It will require Microsoft’s China-based workers to verify their identities when logging in to work computers or phones. The change is part of Microsoft’s global Secure Future Initiative that is intended, among other things, to ensure that all staff use the Microsoft Authenticator password manager and Identity Pass app.
While Apple’s iOS store is available in China, Google Play isn’t. Local smartphone giants such as Huawei and Xiaomi operate their own platforms in the country, but Microsoft has chosen to block access from those companies’ devices to its corporate resources because they lack Google’s mobile services, reads the memo.
Any staff in the country using Android handsets, including those from Huawei or Xiaomi, will be provided with an iPhone 15, as a one-time purchase. The Redmond giant is designating collection points across China where employees can pick up their iPhones.
Microsoft is also introducing the iPhones-only rule in Hong Kong, despite the Google Play Store being available in the special administrative region of China.
It’s a Google updates issue since they’re blocked. Apple isn’t but they comply with the Chinese government just as much as they do in the US as does Google. Remember Google is banned because it would not comply with China. How quickly the Americans forget.
Most likely the corporate spyware that Microsoft enables, requires very recent Google services and Apple services to operate. It’s pretty standard in the corporate spyware world. Usually just a few months out of date at most.
The Redmond giant
One of my least favorite things in journalism. Idk if it is SEO or what but it’s so bizarre.
Nice, no phone means no constant nagging. Thanks MS, always looking out for me.
I know you’re joking, but having a seperate phone exclusively for work stuff is actually great, specifically because it makes it easier to entirely seperate yourself from work. At my old job, I was given a work phone and it was the only phone number I used for all my work stuff. When I was at work, I would answer it, and outside of that it was off or on silent in my work bag. If they wanted me to answer outside of work hours, they had to pay me on-call rates. The same thing applied to group chats and other work-related stuff like that, (e.g. emails). It all went to that phone, and unless I was being paid to be contactable outside of work hours, I wouldn’t be.
The only exception to that was my manager and a select few people who had my personal number for genuine emergencies, and if they used my personal number to contact me asking me about work, it was entirely at my discretion to respond and would mean I’d get on-call pay.
It also meant I could keep my work and personal accounts/apps/etc. completely seperate. If they asked me to download some random app, I could do it on the work phone without worrying about whether they would be able to access other data on my phone or anything like that. Whenever I needed a phone number for 2FA or whatever, I could use the work number and not worry about where exactly that number would end up or how it might be used. For example, I used my work number to register for a conference, and then for months afterwards I would get calls and texts from sales people. That was still slightly annoying, but it was much better than getting calls on my personal phone.
It also meant that when I left that job, I could just wipe that phone without having to worry about having personal data on there, because I never used it for anything except work stuff.
It does sound like Microsoft is asking their employees to pay for an iPhone which is a bit dodgy in my opinion, but I’d still probably take the opportunity to use it completely for work and keep my personal phone seperate. It’s easy enough to get another number, and then when you leave that job you can cancel it and get a new number for the next job, cutting that link entirely.
But iPhones are made by your own fucking competition, Microsoft.
And Android phones are also made by Microsoft’s competitor in many fields.
To me the bigger wtf is why Apple has an App store there, but Android do not.
Android is being used by Microsoft now since Windows Phone didn’t really do very well. Their Surface Duo device runs Android. Windows 11 has a “Windows Subsystem for Android” feature… that uses the Amazon Appstore (and is actually getting phased out - the WSA thing, not the Amazon Appstore).
And yeah, I have no idea why the Google Play Store isn’t available there, seems like a pretty weird decision. Can you tell I hate geoblocking?
Maybe just release AND support some decent phones if your own, Macroshit.
Have you seen Windows 11? I have no faith Microsoft could produce a decent phone OS that would serve users well.
The Microsoft phone was decent, but, yea, their app store was lacking. Shoutout to the Zune, which was pretty good software & hardware from what I can remember.
I will forever maintain that on a purely hardware level that the Zune was better than the iPod. iTunes and later the App Store for iPod Touch is what made iPod won. Zune had no apps.
Dude I went to high school with loved the zune so much he got it’s logo or something tattooed on him. Of course he also liked to tase his own balls, so his tastes were questionable.
The opposite of microsoft is Megahard
microsoft is small and can’t get hard
Free iPhone. Not bad
This is less of a “iPhones are more secure” thing and more “Google play is banned in China” thing.
Apple willingly extinguishes freedom of speech to protect app store profits:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/3/23901205/apple-app-store-government-license-china
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/19/tech/china-apple-whatspp-threads-removal-hnk-intl/index.html
It’s not like Microsoft can’t send APKs over-the-air. Whatever the reason, it’s not because of Google Play.
Man, I’d hate to see an IT department you were in charge of.
I may be completely off the mark, but I’m pretty sure that Intune device management doesn’t allow you to push arbitrary APKs out to managed Android devices. There would still also be the issue of getting the device managed to start with.
Microsoft isn’t about to roll out their own version of the Play Store just to serve APKs to their Chinese employees.
They also are not going to try and manage rolling out updates to whatever cluster mess of different android devices those employees use, tracking update compliance, etc
Any other solution to this involves considerable extra work for their internal IT team(s). Easier to just force everyone needing access to corporate devices to use a single standard (and buy company phones for the few who raise a stink).
I think that intune has the same control over Android as it does iOS. One a device is enrolled, it can be wiped and sandboxed apps can be approved or denied. I’m not sure about pushing apps to phones, I think the end user had to download it still. Regardless, is not about Microsoft and it’s control, it’s about China and their control, and Apple gets on their knees and opens wide.
