There are several reasons why anyone buys Apple products, especially iPhones. These range from purely emotional/social reasons like wanting to own the most luxurious brand in smartphones to a utility/need based reason of seamless connectivity across multiple devices.
However, there is a fairly large user base of iPhone who buy these phones for security and data privacy. Apple’s reputation is just like the Swiss banks when it comes to privacy and data protection of its customers. Unfortunately, this unique strength of Swiss banks has been exploited since by many scammers and fraudsters who have kept heaps of illicitly earned cash in these accounts.
Apple is regarded as a very stringent company when it comes to sharing details or data of its customers. Users across different segments have a lot of private and personal data on their smartphones which they would never want to be in the public domain. However, business leaders, politicians, bureaucrats, and many other senior profiles across industries and sectors have much more to hide. It’s not always that are doing wrong, hence need to hide. It is because they are privy to extremely critical information and data which in all possible ways needs to be kept a secret. There are tons of global examples where we saw how exposure of such information like call logs, call details, chat conversations, emails, pictures, voice memos, etc., not only put an individual in trouble, but also affected the image and reputation of several organisations – public or privately held.
In my informal conversations with senior business leaders, government officials and few politicians as well, the top reason for them to rely eyes shut on Apple is that they feel secure with their data. It is just like their Swiss Bank of data! Not suggesting that they have a Swiss Bank account 😊.
Apple has over these years built this strong reputation around privacy, data security and safety. There have been instances in the public domain as well, where even law enforcing agencies were declined by Apple on their requests to share certain information about their customers. It is not that on the Android front there aren’t brands that are not highly conscious of data privacy and security of their customers. For instance, Samsung has its Knox technology to protect the Samsung users. Similarly, HMD Global, which makes the Nokia phones, has been one of the torchbearers of privacy and security in the industry. So has been OnePlus as a brand talking about security. But the very fact that all of these are using Google’s OS impacts the user thinking that in any case Google would be ‘using’ their data.
We haven’t seen any proven instances of Google’s data breach or privacy concerns, but its known monetisation model, based on sharing information in one or the other form has developed a perception among users that anything coming from Google isn’t reliable when it comes to data privacy and security. This is perhaps also a reason why Google hasn’t been able to make strong inroads into the enterprise applications where Microsoft enjoys a very high credibility.
Apple’s strong credentials around data security and privacy continues to make it the most wanted brand for senior management, government officials, politicians, film stars and any public celebrity who would be extremely sensitive about any personal information or data getting leaked, which may go against the public image and perception of that individual.
For Android smartphone makers, it looks a distant dream to build this level of credibility and reputation about the data security and privacy. There is no major issue or concern about them, but the problem lies in the lineage of OS they use. Does this mean they will have to eventually look for their own OS or partner with someone like Blackberry, which was the only other brand having Apple like reputation about data security and privacy. We need to see how the industry evolves here over next 3-5 years and what solution the Android smartphone makers come up with to address this concern of high-end consumers for whom data security and privacy is paramount.
