{"id":293658,"date":"2025-12-01T20:38:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T20:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/293658\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T20:38:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T20:38:10","slug":"india-is-ordering-apple-and-other-phone-makers-to-preinstall-a-state-owned-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/293658\/","title":{"rendered":"India is ordering Apple and other phone makers to preinstall a state-owned app"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">India\u2019s Department of Telecommunications is giving phone manufacturers 90 days to comply with an order to pre-install a state-owned app on new phones and push it to existing phones through software updates, reports <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/sustainability\/boards-policy-regulation\/india-orders-mobile-phones-preloaded-with-government-app-ensure-cyber-safety-2025-12-01\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Reuters<\/a>. The government order was privately sent out to phone manufacturers on November 28th, according to Reuters, including Apple, Samsung, Vivo, Oppo, and Xiaomi.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">In August, Russia <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/apps\/764070\/russias-national-messenger-app-max-must-be-preinstalled-on-new-devices-soon\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">issued a similar order<\/a> requiring phone manufacturers to preload a state-backed messenger app, Max.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">In this case, the state-owned <a href=\"https:\/\/sancharsaathi.gov.in\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sanchar Saathi<\/a> app is already available on the App Store and Google Play Store, but this order would make it mandatory and prevent it from being disabled or deleted. The app includes features for blocking and tracking lost or stolen phones based on their IMEI, and reporting suspected fraud messages.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">While iOS users still make up a small slice of the pie in India, Apple\u2019s sales in the region <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2025-09-05\/apple-s-india-sales-hit-record-9-billion-after-big-retail-push\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">hit a record high<\/a> of $9 billion in September. Similarly, Google began <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/india\/google-begins-direct-online-sales-pixel-phones-india-2025-05-29\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">offering direct online sales of Pixel phones<\/a> in India earlier this year, and both companies have increased local manufacturing of their mobile devices in recent years. Apple and Google didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"India\u2019s Department of Telecommunications is giving phone manufacturers 90 days to comply with an order to pre-install a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[304,84,59,844,2306,50,305,1560,227,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-293658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-gb","11":"tag-google","12":"tag-mobile","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-policy","15":"tag-samsung","16":"tag-tech","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}