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A coordinated attempt by Chinese technology companies to circumvent Apple’s privacy policies has erupted, a significant victory for the iPhone maker in what was considered a threat to its global privacy push.
The technical groups led by Baidu, Tencent and TikTok, ByteDance, had worked with two Beijing-affiliated groups to create a new way to track iPhones for advertising, called CAID, that would allow them to identify users even if they refused. to let apps use Apple’s official ID. , called IDFA.
CAID was developed last year and had been openly tested for months before a version scheduled for late March. After the Financial Times reported its existence in mid-March, advertising technology experts saw the attempt as a serious risk to Apple’s global privacy standards and its $ 50 billion business in China.
Eric Seufert, a consultant, had said the coordinated attempt put Apple in “an impossible situation.” He said Apple should choose between rejecting CAID, risking Beijing’s anger, or making the embarrassing decision to allow it and admit that the world’s most populous country follows different rules.
“Apple has a catastrophe on its hands,” he wrote on Twitter.
Apple made its position clear shortly after by rejecting updates from several Chinese apps it had captured by enlisting CAID in its software updates from its App Store.
Several people in China and Hong Kong said that after these rejections, CAID quickly lost support and that the project did not gain strength.
“This is a clear victory for Apple, and also for consumer privacy, as China’s technology giants have been forced to back down and comply with Apple’s rules,” said Rich Bishop, chief executive. of AppInChina, a leading international software publisher in China. .
“The Chinese application ecosystem was collectively captivating the bull with CAID, under the theory that Apple could not afford to ban all major applications in the market,” added Alex Bauer, head of product marketing at CAID. adtech group Branch.
“Apple called its bluff and it appears to have reaffirmed control over the situation by aggressively striking the first adopters of the wedding before the consortium gained real momentum.”
ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment. Tencent and Baidu declined to comment. Apple would not specifically mention CAID, but reiterated that its “App Store terms and guidelines apply equally to all developers around the world” and that “applications deemed ignoring the choice will be rejected.” of the user “.
Although CAID was headed by the state-backed Chinese Advertising Association of 2,000 members and the Chinese Academy of Information and Communication Technology, a research institute that reports directly to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, it is unclear whether these groups had the support of Beijing.
Nor is it obvious that the groups knew that CAID was violating Apple’s policies, the gray areas of which are being carefully examined in the United States and abroad.
Spokesmen for some of the companies involved in the effort said they believed the CAID had Apple’s seal of approval and that the CAA, whose website still has information about CAID, including an application form , had previously told FT that he was “actively communicating” with the tech giant.
If the CAID had gained momentum and received the full support of Beijing, the repercussions would have been widespread. One person familiar with the CAA strategy said the group was also working on an Android ID, known as the OID, but the CAA first wanted to test the waters in the smaller iPhone market.
Bishop said that if Chinese companies now comply with Apple’s rules, they are likely to strengthen Search Ads, Apple’s App Store advertising business, where developers can pay for their app to be the first result for words. certain key. The service is nearly five years old in the United States, but was only available in China last month. “It’s one of the few ways left to accurately target Chinese iOS users,” he said.
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