Data privacy services have become a new battleground for technology giants like Apple to attract customers. Rivaling with smartphone market competition, Apple announced in early June 2019 that it plans to advance customer data protection by adding a new login service and improving privacy for geographical maps services. In summer 2019, Apple will test the ‘Sign in with Apple’ button, which will appear on third-party applications and websites, next to sign in options by Google and Facebook. By the end of 2019, the new sign in option will officially become available to all users, even customers who are not using on Apple devices. This is expected to expand the company’s customer base.
Apple has been broadening its scope of services in an attempt to increase its market competitiveness. Music streaming subscriptions, mobile payments, and an Apple TV streaming service are among the company’s new products. The Apple Watch will also be equipped with its own app store that is independent of the iPhone app download manager. With these innovations, the tech business aims to increase profits after a decline in the number of iPhone sales. More than half of Apple’s total revenue originates from iPhone sales, making it a key product of the company. In April 2019, iPhone sales dropped by 16%, raising concerns over the company’s business strategy.
Apple regards building trust with new approaches to data privacy protection as a way out of this precarious situation. The new alternative single sign-on (SSO) will offer increased privacy to users compared to sign in options by Google and Facebook. Apple will assign anonymized email addresses to users when they log in to new applications or websites on their devices. Thereby, third-party access to user information and email accounts will be inhibited. This business move aligns with Apple’s other privacy protection efforts such as data encryption for the iMessage tool and a limitation of third-party tracking on Apple’s web browser Safari. The new sign in service will become mandatory on iOS applications that use SSO. Apple iOS users can also expect a new Face ID sign in option in the future.
Securing data privacy on maps is another major addition to Apple’s spectrum of new services. Maps will grant customers more privacy and protect activities by preventing installed applications from tracking the location of users. This new update will give users the option to limit sharing their location to one time only when they install a new application. Thereby, users can select from a greater range of privacy options.
While Apple could win the trust of new consumers with these security updates, skeptics argue that Apple will still maintain control over a large pool of user data. In order to operate the login system, Apple needs to store information, even if Apple does not redirect the information to applications that users have installed. While Apple’s solution may not be perfect, it is an attempt at overhauling data security after the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018. Before the scandal was revealed, data of millions of Facebook users had been collected and analyzed for political campaigning purposes.
Apple has invested approximately 54 million USD into an advertisement campaign to promote the company’s focus on data protection. This may attract customers, who have turned away from Apple because of rising product prices. Providing reportedly safer alternatives to the services of Facebook or Google may prove a successful strategy. Facebook and Google have previously been involved in data privacy scandals which revealed that user data was collected and sold to third parties without user approval. Apple’s competitors, however, are developing plans to enlarge their customer bases as well. Facebook enables end-to-end encrypted messaging on the Facebook Messenger and Instagram, and Google sells smartphones that are equipped with functions similar to those of an iPhone but at lower costs compared to Apple. In order to rival Apple’s approach, Facebook and Google will also have to improve consumer trust by relying on new data privacy strategies.
