The Antitrust "beats" on Samsung and Apple with two maxi fines, respectively from 5 and 10 million euros. The Competition Authority has in fact “ascertained that the companies of the Apple group and samsung group have engaged in unfair business practices in connection with the release of certain updates of the firmware of cell phones that have caused serious malfunctions and significantly reduced performance, thereby accelerating the process of replacing them”. In essence, the practice known as "planned obsolescence" has ended up under accusation, i.e. the fact of aging mobile phones by pushing for their replacement.
The firmware, to understand each other, is that set of programs and applications that cannot be changed by the customer and that are permanently incorporated into the system. In the cases examined by the Authority, the updates proposed with insistence ended up slowing down or blocking the cell phones sold by the two manufacturers, absorbing a lot of energy and reducing the duration or efficiency of the batteries.
Here are the words of the Antitrust that explain the malfunctions:
In particular, Samsung has persistently offered, since May 2016, to consumers who had purchased a Notes 4 (placed on the market in September 2014) to proceed to install the new one firmware of Android called Marshmallow prepared for the new Note 7 phone model, without informing of the serious malfunctions due to the greater stresses of thehardware e requiring a high repair cost for out-of-warranty repairs connected to such malfunctions.
As for Apple, it has insistently offered, since September 2016, to the owners of various iPhone 6 models (6/6Plus and 6s/6sPlus respectively placed on the market in the autumn of 2014 and 2015), to install the new iOS 10 operating system developed for the new iPhone7, without informing higher power demands of the new operating system and the possible inconveniences – such as sudden shutdowns – that such an installation could have entailed. To limit these problems, Apple released a new update in February 2017 (iOS 10.2.1), without however warning that its installation could reduce the response speed and functionality of the devices. In addition, Apple has not prepared any assistance measures for iPhones that had experienced malfunctions not covered by the legal guarantee, and only in December 2017 provided the possibility of replacing the batteries at a discounted price.
Hence the decision to apply the maximum sanctions foreseen. Both companies will also have to publish a corrective statement on the Italian page of their website informing them of the Authority's decision, inserting the link to the provision that sanctioned the unfair commercial practices.
