Why Can’t I Change my Apple ID to an E-mail Address?

Confused and wondering why your new iPhone doesn’t accept or rock an e-mail address, but only allows a phone number as the Apple ID?

I know what you’re thinking. Bummer.

What’s worse is it is pretty difficult to find the reason for this and if it is even possible to change your Apple ID from a phone number to an e-mail address.

But it’s alright, I’ve gotchu’—regarding only the former reason part though. Unfortunately, apparently, it is not possible to do the latter. But hey, at least reading this post will hit you with that good intel I’ve got coming your way!

Reason

As Apple support—in a tiny little corner of the long Apple ID topic page—says itself:

“In China and India, you can use your phone number as your Apple ID. If you already have an Apple ID that’s an email address, you can’t change it to a phone number. And you can’t change a phone number Apple ID to an email address.”

Don’t trust me? You can read the support page right here.

Apple seems to hate China and India for some reason, and only users that have bought their iDevices from these two countries will experience the Apple ID issue. There appears to be no specific reason for this, but if I activate my deduction mode, I can think of only one common factor—for both these countries—right off the bat that prominently pops out and hits my 70,000th brain cell like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Population. These two countries have the largest and second largest populations on Earth.

Apple is punishing you for procreating, yet you choose to not walk the holy, open-source, up-to-date-with-the-most-modern-standards path of Android… Yield to Android and you shall cease to have shitty problems you have with your overpriced, restricted, incapable iDevice.

Well, that surely escalated rather quickly.