Skip to main content

A company asked employees who own an iPhone 7 to resign

Apple iPhone 7
Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends
Have you already bought an iPhone 7? Did you get fired from your job after showing it around the office? We’d certainly hope not, but there is at least one company in China that is threatening similar action against employees that decide Apple’s latest smartphone is the one for them.

The Nanyang Yongkang Medicine Company, located in the Henan province, sent out a memo to staff explicitly telling staff not to buy the iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus. Those that ignored the directive were told they should simply resign, according to the BBC’s translation of the document, which had been shared extensively on Chinese social media.

Related: Read our review of the iPhone 7 here, and the iPhone 7 Plus here

There’s always a chance extreme messages like this are fake, or have been misinterpreted, but the company has verified the document. A local news outlet that spoke to the firm said the memo came from the chairman, but wasn’t a rally against the iPhone specifically. It was instead about promoting spending time and money on family, rather than an expensive smartphone. However, no-one has resigned or been fired for owning an iPhone 7 yet.

A hospital in China has also taken an anti-iPhone stance, and banned workers from buying the iPhone 7. While it’s not threatening anyone’s job, it does say Apple fans with an iPhone 7 in their hand won’t get a good appraisal in the future, may miss out on pay increases, and will be advised to return the device. It was a response to a member of the hospital’s team that had spent three months wages on an iPhone 7.

Again, like Nanyang Yongkang Medicine, this wasn’t really about the iPhone itself, but its cost. The manager told the BBC its company stood for diligence and frugality, and borrowing money or even selling organs to fund the purchase of an iPhone 7 didn’t fit in with this thinking. The iPhone 7 starts at the equivalent of $800 in China, and the iPhone 7 Plus from $960.

Apple isn’t having an easy time in China at the moment. It’s apparently now the fifth most popular smartphone manufacturer with a market share of 7 percent, down from over 9 percent this time last year, and behind Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi — all of which are Chinese. Apple is doing its best to win approval in China, with major investments there including stock in local ride-sharing platform Didi Chuxing, and building a new research and development facility that will be completed by the end of the year.

Editors' Recommendations

Andy Boxall
Senior Mobile Writer
Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…
iPhone SE 4: news, rumored price, release date, and more
The Apple iPhone SE (2022) and Apple iPhone SE (2020) together.

While the spotlight always seems to be on Apple’s mainline iPhones, the iPhone SE is a great pick for those who are on a budget. If you want an iPhone that doesn't break the bank, the SE is the way to go.

The original iPhone SE came out in 2016, and then Apple revamped it in 2020 and 2022 by giving it some more modern hardware. The iPhone SE tends to get updated every two or so years rather than annually like the traditional iPhone. This means  that we should see a new iPhone SE 4 this year, but it’s not so cut-and-dried with this particular model.

Read more
3 reasons why I’ll actually use Anker’s new iPhone power bank
A person holding the Anker MagGo Power Bank.

Power banks are a necessary evil, and even if you don’t consider yourself a “power user” who's likely to drain a phone’s battery in less than a day, there will be times when one comes in handy. And when I am forced to carry one, I want it to be as helpful and versatile as possible.

I’ve been trying Anker’s MagGo Power Bank 10K -- meaning it has a 10,000mAh cell inside it -- and there are three reasons why I'm OK with it taking up valuable space in my bag.
It has a screen on it

Read more
Here’s how Apple could change your iPhone forever
An iPhone 15 Pro Max laying on its back, showing its home screen.

Over the past few months, Apple has released a steady stream of research papers detailing its work with generative AI. So far, Apple has been tight-lipped about what exactly is cooking in its research labs, while rumors circulate that Apple is in talks with Google to license its Gemini AI for iPhones.

But there have been a couple of teasers of what we can expect. In February, an Apple research paper detailed an open-source model called MLLM-Guided Image Editing (MGIE) that is capable of media editing using natural language instructions from users. Now, another research paper on Ferret UI has sent the AI community into a frenzy.

Read more