We made a call last week that Apple had created a trust issue in the UK, and possibly more widely, by breaking its commitment to protecting its users’ privacy by withdrawing Advanced Data Protection (ADP) for UK users to comply with the government’s demands to, in certain circumstances, be able to access all of a user’s data.

Is Apple Doing Its Business Out In Public To Try To Show Transparency?

But wait, there’s more:

  • On one hand … a transparently public vote. Apple took the decision to remove or retain its DEI policies to its shareholders. Rather than stand firm and proclaim a commitment to diversity and inclusion, or capitulate and remove its public DEI commitment, Apple’s leadership put the vote to its shareholders, who overwhelmingly voted (97%) to keep DEI on Apple’s agenda.
  • On the other … an effort that might cause some to question its commitment to its values. After removing ADP in the UK, Apple then took the case to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which in its own words is an “independent judicial body. We provide the right of redress to anyone who believes they have been the victim of unlawful action by a public authority using covert investigative techniques.”

In both instances, Apple had a choice: Make a stand or comply. Was the former case weakness on behalf of Tim Cook and his leadership team unwilling to make a personal stand? Or a power play to demonstrate what they already knew that shareholders would tell them? Was the latter a play to publicly demonstrate the stakes and amplify the conversation? Or a strategy misstep that Apple is now trying to rectify?

Transparency Matters

Since we’ve been invoking classical mythology in our recent blogs, let’s turn to Greek historian Plutarch this week, who tells us of a statue of veiled Isis in the city of Sais in Egypt, symbolizing mystery and the unknowable. In both of Apple’s recent cases, the true motives are veiled and unknowable without a candid interview with Apple’s leaders. As analysts, we look at multiple angles, but right or wrong, transparency matters — a lot.

When we established our trust research in 2021 and into 2022, we studied the impact of various levers of trust, such as transparency. Back then (and there’s no reason to think that this has significantly changed), we found that for a consumer technology company (like Apple), customers who believed the company was transparent were more than twice as likely to buy additional products/services from the company and were almost four times as likely to forgive company mistakes compared to those who didn’t believe that the company was transparent.

Apple Has More To Lose In The UK Than In The US

In Forrester’s December 2024 Consumer Pulse Survey, we asked 540 UK and 551 US online adults, “Which of the following specific companies or organizations do you trust to keep your personal information and data secure?” We found that:

  • UK consumers trust Apple more than the national government. Some 35% of UK consumers trust Apple with their personal data compared to 25% who trust the government, and high-income UK households lean significantly more toward trusting Apple.
  • US consumers trust federal, state, and local government more than Apple. State (42%) and federal government (40%) garner more trust when it comes to protecting personal data than Apple does, with only 31% of US consumers saying they’d trust Apple to keep their data secure. Region matters in the US, with Apple’s trust level plummeting in the Midwest and drawing even with state and local government on the West Coast.

Transparency is a key driver of consumer trust, which in turn is a key driver of brand experience. Apple needs to step up the transparency of its transparency game in the UK, because while UK consumers trust it for now, complacency is a killer.

Learn more about the relationship between brand experience and customer experience at our CX Summit EMEA this year, June 2–4 in London.