Has Microsoft Fallen in Love With the iPhone?

In a move that has surprised many, Microsoft has told its employees in China to stop using their Android smartphones and switch to iPhones instead.

Yes, you read that right: Microsoft, the company whose former CEO, Steve Ballmer, mocked the iPhone when it was launched. Fortunately, Balmer, who managed to miss out on every technological revolution during his mandate, flatlining the company’s share price, is safely out of the way, and under the brilliant Satya Nadella, it is now notably more in touch with reality and is doing very well.

What would you do if your company had recently been subjected to a sustained barrage of cyber-attacks that had undermined its credibility? The logical thing would be to implement a two-factor authentication system for your employees. The problem with that relatively straightforward solution, which means telling your employees to authenticate with an app is that the Google Play Store is not available in China, meaning Android users have to use application platforms owned by Xiaomi or Huawei, which Microsoft blocks.

Therefore, the only reasonable way for employees in China to access the Microsoft Authenticator and Identity Pass apps is to download them to an iPhone, via the still-available App Store. In addition, since May, Microsoft allows users to authenticate their accounts using passkeys instead of passwords, which means they can access Apple’s FaceID features for biometric authentication.

That has led Microsoft to give each of its more than 6,000 employees in China an iPhone 15, install pickup stations at all its facilities, and to enforce its use for all professional activity. In fact, it already told many of his employees some time ago that, in the face of growing tensions between the United States and China, they should consider moving to other countries.

Microsoft, which does not have its own smartphone technological platform, is a very pragmatic company with respect to the smartphones used by its employees, and given the priority of making the company more secure, has opted to follow the same cybersecurity protocols that are standard in the rest of the organization (and in many other others). I’m pretty sure they got a nice discount from Apple…

(En español, aquí)

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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