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.
Fuck off. If you’re mandating what device I’m to use for work; you’re going to provide said device free of charge, or shut the fuck up when I use whatever I like.
That’s my read of it, or am I misunderstanding something?
Microsoft will purchase for their Android using employees an iPhone 15. The reference to one-time being that employees are only entitled to one, in the event they were to lose or damage it?
I could be wrong; but it came across to me as a “we’ll sell you one at a special discount”
Fair enough; it’s a bit vaguely worded and could be interpreted multiple ways.
From my experience, big corporations have always either provided me with company-issued phones for official use, or offered an additional allowance if I’ve opted to use my own personal device.
Then again, given how absolutely absurd some of Microsoft’s recent decisions have been (eg. Recall) - you can’t really be certain.
Considering they are designating “collection points” for the phones, I think you read it correctly.
One-time purchase is probably to incentivize not losing/selling your company phone.
In China you don’t get to have that opinion.
That’s not how it works in “communist” China.
Workers don’t have too many rights.
Maybe not stellar but still better than quite a few of the 135 countries surveyed by this NGO in 2022. Behind Brazil, Russia and South Africa but ahead of India. Better than the so-called “land of the free” also, so maybe the joke’s on them?
That’s a lot of whataboutism you’re doing there.
sorry if the data I brought disturbed your China bashing, you’re free to ignore it
Oh poor China! How dare I bash such a paradise (non-Han Chinese excepted)!
👀