Expanding Cyber War Kills Apple's Global Growth Plans. A headacke for the company giant

Tim Cook’s much-rumored plan to lead Apple into the car business hit the guardrail last week. German auto makers want nothing to do with the American giant.

That’s bad enough, but the reasons BMW and Daimler dropped out of the deal are even worse.

German newspaper Handelsblatt, citing unnamed industry sources, said one problem is the Germans disliked Apple’s plan to collect location-based data from the new cars. The data would drive new iCloud services.

We don’t know what those services would be. Presumably Apple thinks drivers would like them. But BMW and Daimler reportedly thought European consumers would object to having an American company handle their personal data.

Apple (AAPL) is not just any American company.

It spent the last three months facing public FBI demands to penetrate its own security measures and reveal data the U.S. government wanted to see. That German companies would object to this is no surprise. They recall a time when their own government’s agents routinely demanded “Your papers, please.”

Unlike many Americans, Germans are still sensitive to such intrusions.

Having seen the U.S. government demand data from Apple, and having seen Apple’s inability to stop it, BMW and Daimler probably made the right choice. The deal would not have worked. That’s not Apple’s fault, but Apple will pay the price. So will its American shareholders and employees.

Read more: Patrick Watson: Expanding Cyber War Kills Apple's Global Growth Plans
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