U.K. seeking USD 935 million in damages from Apple for unfair practices

Apple Inc. is reportedly facing a class-action lawsuit in the United Kingdom, which is seeking USD 938 million in damages, accusing the tech giant of mishandling its market dominance.

Justin Gutmann, a consumer rights activist, is leading the case, claiming that the mobile maker participated in unethical trade practices under competition law by implementing a power management software in iOS 10.2.1 in January 2017 that significantly impacted iPhone performance.

According to sources, the suit is being filed in the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London at the behest of nearly 25 million users who own iPhones ranging from the 6 to the X series.

However, this is not the first time Apple has been accused of performance throttling. In 2020, France won a USD 27 million lawsuit against the company over similar issues, while in 2018 Italian regulators hit Apple with relatively minor penalties for pushing updates that revealed the likelihood of the phones slowing down.

Balance Legal Capital, which is funding the litigation, has established an 'opt-out, not opt-in' policy, which indicates that affected UK customers do not need to actively engage in this representative suit. They must, however, provide their information much later as the case develops if they want to pursue a fraction of the compensation, which is estimated to be no more than USD 36 per affected device.

Gutmann suggested that this latest action illustrated that Apple's tool was presented with the target of decreasing demand on the battery, which resulted in a 58 percent slowing of the processor's peak performance.

He added that this was a clear case of customer deception because no such details were referenced in the update's description and users were not alerted of the impact it would have on their handsets.

Furthermore, customers who did not update the version were warned that they risked being subjected to glitches and security flaws by failing to install such critical updates. Gutmann remarked that in the event of this case becoming successful, it will lead to the industry's behemoths reassessing their business approaches and abstaining from such conduct.

Source credit:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/15/apple-iphone-throttling-uk-lawsuit/