On August 6th, some foreign medias quoted an anonymous official who said, because of security concerns, the government removed 10 Apple products including iPad, iPad Mini, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro from the government procurement list, and that the Chinese government had no intention in buying iPhone 6.
However, the fact is not true. Some media found in the Chinese government procurement website, there are still Apple products in the recent related procurement notices. In the central government procurement network, there are still 5 devices of Apple Macbook Pro in the category of the protocol supply, which lists the relevant suppliers and prices information.
According to some sources, the list that Apple failed to enter is the "sixteenth energy-saving products of the government procurement list", which is jointly issued by the Ministry of Finance and the National Development and Reform Commission on July 24th. A domestic media said by quoting the insiders, Apple is not banned by the government procurement, but it initiatively gave up the access to the list.
To enter this government procurement list, which is for the optimization of the resource allocation and updated every six months, companies need to submit relevant materials in accordance with the procedure. Therefore, the analysts said, the failure to enter the list maybe that Apple didn’t submit the required documents and letter of commitment.
The vice president of German Telecom in China Fang Honggang denied that the government banned Apple products because of security concerns, and that Apple is more focused on the individual consumer market, minorly affected by the impact of government procurement.
Some grass-roots civil servants said, their department has always been purchasing domestic brand devices, the Apple products are never on the procurement list.
An executive of a mobile phone company also said, the industry is concerned about Apple because it is related to information security and state security, and the government's attitude can be seen from the final procurement lists. As it is reported, devices procurements in CNPC are all of domestic brands.
However, Apple Inc. in China has not made any response to the above questions.
The share price of Apple is not affected by this news, with a dropdown of only 0.17% in the same day.