Italian consumer association launches lawsuit against Apple

Italian Consumer Association Altroconsumo has launched a class-action lawsuit against Apple for planned obsolescence.

As Reuters reports, Altroconsumo sues Apple and seeks 60 million euros on behalf of Italian consumers. The association claims Apple “tricked” customers, with the lawsuit covering the iPhone 6, ‌iPhone‌ 6 Plus, ‌iPhone‌ 6s, and ‌iPhone‌ 6s Plus.

“When consumers buy Apple iPhones, they expect sustainable quality products. Unfortunately, that is not what happened with the ‌iPhone‌ 6 series. Not only were consumers defrauded, and did they have to face frustration and financial harm, from an environmental point of view it is also utterly irresponsible,” said ​Els Bruggeman, Head of Policy and Enforcement at Euroconsumers. “This new lawsuit is the latest front in our fight against planned obsolescence in Europe. Our ask is simple: American consumers received compensation, European consumers want to be treated with the same fairness and respect.”

With the release of iOS 10.2.1 in 2017, Apple throttled the performance of older iPhones in order to prevent unexpected shutdowns due to degraded batteries. The company didn’t mention performance scaling down while turning away unexpected shutdowns. This led the company to face a huge public backlash.

Apple in an email said the company never had intentions to shorten the battery life of any Apple product or to degrade the user experience. Back in 2018, Italy fined Apple 10 million euros for “dishonest commercial practices” that “caused serious malfunctions and significantly reduced performance, thus accelerating phones’ substitution.”

Apple is also facing similar lawsuits in Belgium and Spain. Italy is also investigating Apple for improper commercial practices in the cloud computing space.