India to Crack Down on Pre-Installed Apps Under New Smartphone Security Rules

[MacRumors]

India plans to force smartphone makers like Apple to allow removal of pre-installed apps and mandate screening of OS updates under proposed new security rules, reports Reuters.

Under the new rules, smartphone makers will need to include an uninstall option for pre-installed apps and new models will be checked for compliance by a lab authorized by the Bureau of Indian Standards agency, according to people with knowledge of the plan.

Apple already allows many of its own apps to be deleted, but core apps like Messages, Photos, and Phone cannot be deleted, only removed from the Home screen and hidden in the App Library.

According to the report's sources, India's IT ministry is considering the rules over concerns about spying and abuse of user data, with explicit references to the risk from China.

"Pre-installed apps can be a weak security point and we want to ensure no foreign nations, including China, are exploiting it," said an unnamed official. "It's a matter of national security."

Since a border clash with China in 2022, India has banned more than 300 Chinese apps in the country, including TikTok. It has also intensified scrutiny of investments by Chinese firms.

According to government documents seen by Reuters, a closed-door meeting was attended by representatives from Xiaomi, Samsung, Apple and Vivo to discuss the plan.

The government is said to be giving smartphone makers a year to comply with the rules when it comes into effect, but there are concerns that they could delay launch timeframes for new smartphones and lead to business losses. Currently it takes about 21 weeks for a smartphone and its parts to be tested by India's IT ministry for safety compliance.

Article Link: India to Crack Down on Pre-Installed Apps Under New Smartphone Security Rules

 

[-BigMac-]

I see why they are doing it from a security perspective (I dont know how safe Android phones are etc.)

but on the other hand..
isn't Apple utilising factories in India, and talk of a new huge factory being built there?
I'm sure Apple isn't going to be happy about this proposed change..

India shooting their investors in the foot..

 

[krspkbl]

Apple somehow gets a free pass for having their bloated apps preinstalled. I mean sure yeah they aren't as bad as Samsung but still nobody gives a toss if Apple does it.

Good on India. Apple should ask you during set up which of their apps you want installed, download them and what defaults you want. If you skip everything then only the basics should be included such as phone, messages, safari and they should all be able to be deleted if you want to use a different dialler/messaging/internet browser app.

 

[contacos]

Does not really surprise me to be honest. Ever tried to get something as simple as a prepaid sim card in India? What a pain in the A ... I am not sure if this is related to the drama involving Pakistan but India as a whole seems to be very tight on surveillance / security.

ALSO, 3rd party Apps is one thing but if you do not even trust the pre-installed Apps from vendor X, why even allow those devices to be sold in the first place?!? Might as well question the OS or hardware as a whole

 

[NoelWalker]

Yeah let's allow users to delete the essential apps like Phone and Camera and App Store then proceed to complain at Apple for giving them uninstall options to turn their iPhones into i . This has nothing to do with national security, just pure nonsense.

 

[Ctrlos]

But I like the preinstalled apps on my iPhone. There is an inherent safety in trusting all my data to Apple rather than splitting it across 3rd parties who might hike their prices at a moments notice or go out of business. We might baulk at big tech but it has some advantages.

 

[StellarVixen]

Yes, please. Not just in India, everywhere.

I never open News, Stocks, Home... basically any of the iOS ports on Mac, and then couple more. They are just sitting there taking space, why shouldn't I be able to delete them?

(forgot to say that even when you delete these on Mac by jumping through the hoops, the system volume takes as much space as it did before, so it's pointless to delete them. This is... this is so wrong,I am finding difficult to find words for something like this... this just shouldn't be this way).

 

[StellarVixen]

Yeah let's allow users to delete the essential apps like Phone and Camera and App Store then proceed to complain at Apple for giving them uninstall options to turn their iPhones into i . This has nothing to do with national security, just pure nonsense.

You can present a good argument as to why those are essential for normal functioning of the device, but not for many others. Don't paint the issue as black and white when it's clearly not.

 

[MNGR]

Apple somehow gets a free pass for having their bloated apps preinstalled. I mean sure yeah they aren't as bad as Samsung but still nobody gives a toss if Apple does it.

Good on India. Apple should ask you during set up which of their apps you want installed, download them and what defaults you want. If you skip everything then only the basics should be included such as phone, messages, safari and they should all be able to be deleted if you want to use a different dialler/messaging/internet browser app.

So you will delete the App Store?

 

[somnolentsurfer]

This sounds like it’s more targeted at some of the absolute garbage, borderline malware, that comes preinstalled and unremovable on lots of cheap Android phones.

 

[BvizioN]

Yes, please. Not just in India, everywhere.

I never open News, Stocks,...

I do not have any of these on my phone, nor would I care if they were

 

[DFZD]

By default a smartphone should come with just three apps - dialer, messages and browser. Everything else should be optional during the setup process.

 

[contacos]

By default a smartphone should come with just three apps - dialer, messages and browser. Everything else should be optional during the setup process.

How would you get any other Apps on your device then? Without an AppStore and is "Settings" not considered an App?

 

[jlc1978]

It would be interesting to understand how integrated Apple’s built in apps are to iOS.Depending on hoe Apple has designed them, other apps that rely on them behind the scenes could conceivably stop functioning.

 

[Matsamoto]

I don’t actually see the issue with preinstalled apps on Apple products🙂
I don’t want and use stock, news and more apps and I just deleted them. It takes me barely 1 minute to do this the first time I set up my new iPhone/iPad.
Yes of course one can argue that the apps shouldn’t be there in the first time, but how can Apple know what apps every single user likes?
Am I missing something?🙂

 

[JosephAW]

By default a smartphone should come with just three apps - dialer, messages and browser. Everything else should be optional during the setup process.

And settings

 

[Armada2]

Ah yes let me buy an iPhone so I can delete the Phone and Messages app.. and I will install Skype and Facebook Messenger 😂😂 gg India

 

[cyb3rdud3]

LOL The country that is pestering the world with scammy call centres wants this for security reasons. Yeah right.

Anyway regardless of the real reason I have no issue with this, if people want to reduce the functionality of their device then why not let them. Just make them available as free (re)downloads in the App Store. But wait, shouldn't the app store be deletable as well?

This is clearly aimed at some of those cheap rubbish Android devices with even fake version numbers, fake current security updates, and modified ROMs in ways that noone should ever trust. Perhaps the civil servants should actually target those.

 

[laszlo182]

Yeah let's allow users to delete the essential apps like Phone and Camera and App Store then proceed to complain at Apple for giving them uninstall options to turn their iPhones into i . This has nothing to do with national security, just pure nonsense.

it’s mainly about android phones having preinstalled tiktok, instagram, fb and so on

 

[BellSystem]

Shock…poorly thought out overreaching government policy. Everyone for this assumes it’s enabling your freedom of choice but it’s a road to worse things. Making blanket policy to correct a singular problem like Chinese spyware is a losing strategy. Deal with your problem…China. Between this and the EU forcing the charging port type is ludicrous. This is not how free markets work. Competition is what you want, not holding onto a legacy USB-C port in 2045 because you supported a policy and now there is too much red tape to even get it discussed let alone changed. Please let all the world governments tell us how things should be made….career politicians are experts in technology.

 

[richard13]

21 weeks to test a smartphone. Really?

 

[I7guy]

Most apps are already uninstallable and the code for a few is buried in the operating system.

 

[prime17569]

You can already delete most default apps on iOS 16.3, with the exception of:

Photos
Camera
App Store
Settings
Phone
Safari
Messages

Though there is a point to be made that Apple could allow the use of custom camera, app store, dialer, SMS/MMS apps so the Apple defaults could be deleted too. iOS already allows custom default browsers so it would already be possible to allow Safari to be deleted.

Note that WebKit.framework is actually built in to the OS, so removing the Safari app shouldn't affect WKWebView, but it might affect SFSafariViewController used for embedded browsers. I'm sure Apple could come up with a way for third-party browsers to provide equivalents for WKWebView and SFSafariViewController as well, potentially using ExtensionKit which was introduced in iOS 16.1.

 

[femike]

I see why they are doing it from a security perspective (I dont know how safe Android phones are etc.)

but on the other hand..
isn't Apple utilising factories in India, and talk of a new huge factory being built there?
I'm sure Apple isn't going to be happy about this proposed change..

India shooting their investors in the foot..

Apple has gone to India for cheaper labour, bigger subsidies, lower working conditions, and the potential market, and on the side encouraged by the US Gov anti-China policies. India is holding the cards here, not Apple.

 

[wanha]

From The Government Playbook, rule #137:

When in doubt that others can see through your politically motivated reasoning, remember to refer to "national security"