Is Apple being reckless?
One observation that some Apple pundits like throwing around is that Apple tends to add features with a broader future implementation in mind. For example, Apple added TouchID initially for unlocking your phone only. Then after a year or two, they added Apple Pay.
Although I think it would be wrong to expect Apple to be doing this for every feature, I do consider it very helpful to keep this in mind. That is, do not dismiss their actions unless you have throughly considered the possibility of a hidden agenda that will only reveal itself a few years into the future.
Apple’s stance on privacy is one of these actions.
- Most people have commented that Apple’s focus on privacy will strongly hinder, maybe even cripple their artificial intelligence efforts. This is very dangerous for Apple’s future because it is predicted that artificial intelligence will be a huge part of future personal computing.
- The plus side of a privacy focus is that it becomes a selling point for their products. However, we also know that today’s consumers do not care too much about privacy; at least, they seem to be happy to post photos on Facebook and search on Google.
Taking the two points above, it would seem reckless for any tech company to take the privacy position that Apple is holding today. The demerits are huge while the merits look benign. It looks like a totally irrational move for Apple that maybe enforced only because of Tim Cook’s personal beliefs in human rights. It does not make any sense, that is unless Apple has a larger agenda for the future; an agenda in which privacy plays an essential role.
Looking at Apple’s future markets
As I have mentioned previously, Apple cannot grow significantly larger than it is today without expanding into markets outside of tech. The market that tech can directly address, the market to which Apple can sell its current devices, is limited by the size of the economies in the countries which it sells to, and the amount of money each household is willing to spend on communications and entertainment. Apple has to move into different household buckets of spending. Furthermore, these buckets have to be large enough to drive revenue that can significantly contribute to Apple’s huge earnings.
Looking at what households actually spend their money on, one obvious contender is health. US households spend a huge proportion of their income on health, and for the countries which have an adequate healthcare system in place, health is a huge proportion of their government expenditure. There is a lot of money in health, and as populations in both developed and developing countries age, it is only going to get larger.
Apple is already actively involved in health. Not only does Apple have HealthKit, it also has ResearchKit which allows researchers to easily conduct large studies on patients and CareKit which allows patients to track and manage their own medical conditions. Importantly, privacy of health information is taken very seriously (unlike web history or location tracking data), and although I am no expert, it seems that there are rules and laws even in the USA for this.
For any company that seriously wants to get into health, data privacy is a hugely important issue. In particular, IT giants like Google or Apple will be held to higher standards, and expected to develop the necessary technologies if not yet available. They will be scrutinised by not only the authorities, but also by the regular press. If Apple wants to go further into health, prove the value of their services, and to extract revenue from this huge market, then they have to get the privacy issues sorted out first, and apply leading edge technology to protect patient privacy. This will be the prerequisite.
This is where I find Apple’s hidden privacy agenda. Apple does not need to have strict privacy to compete in the tech world against Google and Amazon. In fact, its privacy stance is detrimental for cutting edge artificial intelligence since server hardware will always be much more powerful than tiny smartphones for machine learning, and differential privacy will always negatively impact what patterns can be observed. However, to impact some key non-tech markets that Apple needs to venture into, privacy will be important and essential. Apple’s stance on privacy should be viewed not by which markets they are selling now, but on which markets they intend to sell to in the future.
Naofumi Kagami 