Company has been sued and will have to pay compensation. The lawsuit was filed in 2017 by iPhone users. Find out more!
Apple is one of the world's leading manufacturers of electronic devices, known for investing in cutting-edge technology and equipment in its iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, MacBooks and more. However, one of the company's strategies didn't work out very well and the company will now have to pay huge compensation to consumers of the brand's famous smartphones.
The controversial case began in 2017, but payments will only start to be made now in 2023. With the court's decision, the company will have to pay more than US$1,450 million to the people who were harmed by the idea, which went wrong.
Find out more details about this case and discover the company's strategy!
Batterygate
Apple will have to pay compensation to iPhone users who felt harmed by the company's strategy, which deliberately reduced the battery performance of older cell phone models. The case became known as “batterygate”.
In 2017, iPhone users in the United States began to notice that their phones were experiencing battery-related performance issues after the release of an update. from iOS released in the same year. The software changed the performance of devices with more degraded batteries, to prevent them from turning off. Due to the problem, some users decided to replace the part and noticed that the problem was solved.
In the same year, the company admitted that it used iOS updates to reduce the performance of the models, and assured that this was done for security reasons, to prevent them from stopping working abruptly. Users began to accuse the company of using this strategy so that they would be forced to buy new models, as the releases were released, since their old phones were experiencing problems.
Agreement
Apple has not acknowledged whether the allegations made by users are true, but has chosen to negotiate a settlement in court to prevent the consequences from worsening during the course of the lawsuit. In California, the settlement was for a payment of up to $500 million to users. In another lawsuit, filed by 33 states, the settlement was for a payment of $113 million.
Each user who complained about the situation until 2020 will receive about US$65, something around R$323. The iPhones involved in the controversy were: iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7 and 7 Plus, with iOS 10.2.1 or 11.2, before December 21, 2017.
This agreement only applies to the US, but in Europe the company was ordered to pay a fine of 10 million Euros. In France, the company was fined 25 million Euros for the same illegal practice.
In 2021, a Portuguese organization also announced that it would file a lawsuit against the manufacturer in Portugal. In the country, around 115,000 iPhone users were harmed by updates that reduced the performance of their devices. If the company is ordered to make payments in the country, the amount should reach around 6.9 million Euros, with a payment of 60 Euros per harmed user. However, there is no information on the progress of the case in the country.
