Apple, Samsung Push Back on India's Mandatory Sanchar Saathi App Mandate

On November 28, India's Department of Telecom issued an order that will reshape how millions of Indians receive their smartphones. Every handset manufactured domestically or imported into the country after ninety days must come with Sanchar Saathi pre-installed—a government fraud-reporting application designed to combat mobile phone scams and strengthen the nation's telecom security infrastructure. For existing devices already in users' hands, the app must arrive through software updates. The directive applies to all manufacturers and importers without exception.

Apple and Samsung, two of the world's largest phone makers, are now preparing to push back. Sources close to Apple indicate the company will seek negotiations with the government, arguing that compliance in the mandate's current form may not be feasible. Samsung is similarly reviewing the order and preparing its own discussions with officials before moving toward implementation. Neither company has publicly stated their objections, but the friction is real: mandatory pre-installation of government applications on consumer devices raises questions about control, user choice, and the technical architecture of operating systems that these companies have spent years perfecting.

The compliance burden is substantial. Handset makers must ensure the app functions across dozens of device models, operating system versions, and regional configurations. They must coordinate with their supply chains, update manufacturing processes, and manage the logistics of pushing updates to hundreds of millions of existing phones. For a company like Apple, which tightly controls what appears on its devices and how users interact with them, the directive represents an unusual constraint on its own platform governance.

But the security argument behind the mandate is not trivial. Mobile phone fraud has become endemic in India. Scammers use spoofed caller IDs, phishing texts, and social engineering to steal money and personal data from millions of users annually. The Sanchar Saathi app allows people to report fraudulent calls and messages directly to telecom authorities, creating a crowdsourced early warning system. Anupam Shrivastava, former chairman of state-owned BSNL and an independent director at handset maker Lava International, called the mandate a necessary and forceful response to a genuine national problem. He acknowledged the compliance burden manufacturers face but emphasized that the security benefit justifies the inconvenience.

Yet Shrivastava also named the elephant in the room: data privacy. The Sanchar Saathi app will have access to call logs, message metadata, and user contact information—the raw material needed to identify fraud patterns. The government has not yet published detailed policies governing what data the app collects, how long it retains information, who can access it, and under what circumstances it might be shared with law enforcement or other agencies. Industry voices are demanding clarity on these points before implementation proceeds. Without transparent data governance, the app risks becoming a surveillance tool as much as a security tool, and manufacturers worry about the liability they might face if user data is mishandled.

The coming negotiations will determine whether the mandate stands as written or whether a compromise emerges. Apple's signal that it may not comply in the current form suggests the company is willing to challenge the order rather than simply absorb it. Samsung's review process indicates a more cautious approach, but the outcome is uncertain. The Department of Telecom has set a ninety-day clock, which means decisions must come quickly. What remains to be seen is whether the government will hold firm on the mandate, whether it will soften the requirements to ease manufacturer concerns, or whether a middle path emerges that preserves the security goal while addressing legitimate questions about data access and user privacy.