Apple cut off business operations in Russia as a result of the country's invasion of Ukraine, but in doing so it may have set a precedent that would be difficult to follow in the future.
According to MarketWatch, Apple is part of a long list of powerful companies that have responded to Russia's invasion of Ukraine with sanctions. The list of companies that have taken action to sanction Russia includes Microsoft, Disney, Netflix, Nike, Boeing, and Cisco.
"We have paused all product sales in Russia," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an email to his employees, according to MarketWatch. "Last week, we stopped all exports into our sales channel in the country. Apple Pay and other services have been limited. RT News and Sputnik News are no longer available for download from the App Store outside Russia. And we have disabled both traffic and live incidents in Apple Maps in Ukraine as a safety and precautionary measure for Ukrainian citizens."
The companies' sanctions against Russia for its transgressions seem like a step in the right direction, but experts are asking if these companies will take similar action if more economically prosperous countries were to become transgressors.
Sanctions against China, for example, would cause a much larger impact on companies' bottom lines. According to Counterpoint Research, in 2021, Russia only accounted for 1.4% or $5 billion of Apple's revenue, but China accounted for 19% or $68.4 billion of Apple's revenue, MarketWatch reported. Research also showed that 26% of iPhone sales in Apple's recently completed first quarter were attributed to China, while Russia represented approximately 2% in sales annually.
"Such are the pitfalls for the tech industry’s biggest players, who have spent billions of dollars for more than two decades expanding internationally to create complex, interconnected global operations," Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, said to MarketWatch. "When the tentacles extend into countries with histories of geopolitical aggressions and human-rights violations, the calculus makes their decisions as political as economic."
Chakravorti said that "Apple is making the bet that whatever China’s future transgressions are, it will not go this far beyond international norms. That faith may be misplaced, but it is a reasonable one to make. China’s leadership is more shrewd than [Russia's President Vladimir] Putin appears to be in keeping its focus on the long game."
MarketWatch reported that Apple allows China's government to censor the Chinese version of the App Store and allows access to Apple's data about its Chinese users.