India has big plans to be able to gather as much data as possible about its own citizens and wants to fulfill them using the big smartphone manufacturers. More precisely, the Indian government has initiated a program through which it offers citizens access to public and private services using biometric information, i.e. fingerprints and iris scanning.
India wants to know as much as possible about the identity of its citizens, so it initiated this program to collect their fingerprints and scan their irises, under the pretext of giving them easy access to these services. Considering that even some banking services work based on the system, it is extremely important for the government and will be imposed on smartphones.
Last week, representatives of the Indian government discussed with representatives of Samsung, Microsoft or Google about the implementation of support for this system in Android, Windows Phone and smartphones. The Indian government wants access to the systems through which this data is collected by the smartphone in order to be able to connect its own national system.
India could force Apple to implement an iris scanner in the iPhone
Although it was invited to the discussions, the Apple company refused to participate, but the Indian government told those present that support for this system will be a condition to sell smartphones in the country. In this idea, the terminals that will not have support for it will not be able to be sold locally, this being a big problem for Apple.
Apple is already having trouble convincing the Indian government to allow it to open stores in the country, so this new initiative could create new problems. If Apple doesn't implement an iris scanner and doesn't give the Indian government access to its biometric scanning technologies, then iPhones could be pulled from sale in the country.
Of course, it will take a long time and there will be many discussions until such a decision could be made, but Apple will not have an "easy life" with the Indian government.
