Apple is finally bringing its Find My feature to South Korea in 2025. According to a translation of a press release published by AppleInsider, the company says the service will launch sometime during the spring.
For years, South Korea has been almost the only country that doesn’t have access to Apple’s tracking network. So what changed? It seems that one of the reasons behind the move is a flood of complaints from users. These complaints are justified, as Apple sells AirTags in the country. Without the Find My network, AirTags are basically useless little silver pucks.
Apple hasn’t addressed the reason behind the sudden change of mind. According to the user petition, the company has kept the feature disabled due to “internal policy.” The country has strict privacy regulations, so that may be the reason the aforementioned internal policy was created. In the past, Apple has said that Find My was absent from South Korea because the company was unable to export high-precision map data due to local laws, as reported by MacRumors.
To that end, South Korea is particularly protective of geographic data. The legal restrictions associated with it have long been a problem for international platforms like Google Maps and Apple Maps, as real-time mapping data is hard to come by. This has also impacted games that rely on mapping data, like Pokémon Go.
However, Find My already works in outlying areas of the country like Baengnyeongdo and Ulleungdo, so who knows why Find My is taking so long to reach the mainland. In any case, this is good news for South Koreans who want to keep track of their valuables. Hopefully the platform works as expected.
Google and Apple are having a bad day. The tech giants are facing a new investigation into their mobile ecosystems from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and pressure is mounting in India to adopt a new app store initiative.
Let’s start with the investigation, which comes a day after the CMA named a former Amazon executive as its interim chair. The CMA is investigating whether Apple and Google’s mobile ecosystems should receive strategic market status (SMS) and thus be subjected to more regulation and pro-competition directives. However, they are not entirely clear on exactly which aspects are being investigated.
This new designation derives from the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act, which came into effect on January 1. Google is also the subject of the first SMS investigation, which was launched earlier this month and focused on potential antitrust practices around the company’s search services.
The CMA’s SMS investigation could last up to nine months, with both cases currently accepting comments on the investigation and potential intervention.