For all those who were wondering how the New York Times news apps had miraculously disappeared from Apple store in China since December 23, here is a little bit of news to put things into perspective. Although the tech giant was not immediately available to shed light on the same, it has finally admitted that such a stance was taken after it received a request from the Chinese authorities saying that the news apps have breached regulations.
The Apple spokeswoman on China declined delve further into which regulatory body had asked for such a drastic measure and what were the specific reasons for such a step. Apple has removed several other news apps in the past but then again none were as major as the New York Times.
New York Times echoed the same, citing that it was done by the authorities as part of a wider attempt to silent independent news coverage in the country.
Complying with such stringent requests from the government has now almost been taken into account as a price of doing business in China and Apple is no exception to the rule. It is also pretty evident that the tech giant is not going to rub the authorities in the wrong way as although there may have been a slump in the sales of Apple products in the last year, China still remains one of the biggest overseas markets of its products and also as the site of its biggest factories. It also had to remove the iBooks store and iTunes Movies services it had launched and it remains out of service complying with the authorities.
Chinese mainstream media had decided to give this news a miss but it was a widely discussed on the social media with several speculations and some even offering methods such as attempting the change the country ID in the App store so that they can avail the apps.
