TIL 13: Forcing you to buy
Have you heard of ‘planned obsolescence’?
This is when companies intentionally shorten the lifespan of a product with the aim of making customers replace it.
A case in point famously was Apple declaring that its updates make their phones slower to enhance the battery life.
Another would be printers, where companies deliberately make cartridges so expensive or difficult to refill, that replacing the entire printer itself seems like a more convenient option.
And today I learned, that in 2008, France passed a law against this practice, infamously taking Apple to court.
The French government investigated that Apple, with its recent updates, slowed down the older model of iPhones significantly, thereby forcing customers to purchase new phones. Apple, in its defense, stated that this was done to improve user experience and to prevent phones from shutting down randomly.
But the courts didn’t buy it as it would cost much less for a user to replace the batteries of their old phone than to buy a new one.
And since then the case has opened a huge can of worms.
If you remember the news around that time, Apple apologized for slowing down their iPhones, paying around $500 million in settlement to the US government and other settlements to the EU.
Following this, governments around the world have cracked down hard on corporates for engaging in this practice. Firms like Samsung, Canon, Epson, Amazon for its Kindle devices, and even Tesla have been called for questioning.
And most first-world countries now have consumer laws in some form or the other to protect their citizens against planned obsolescence. The laws cite reasons to control both consumer exploitation by large firms and also to reduce electronic waste- which in recent trends has risen significantly across the world, for both recyclable and non-recyclable waste.
But will these laws actually help control Planned Obsolescence?
Well, maybe. Maybe not.
You see, since the premise of the law is pretty vague, they’re easy to get around. For instance, if the court questions printer companies on the high price of their cartridges, they could argue that those are two separate products and that the price of one cannot dictate the price of another.
Similar to how rising fuel prices cannot dictate the prices of cars.
Another thing is the settlement amount. Apple paid $500 million in settlement to the US government. This is hardly a percentage of their entire profits. They could make more money by rolling out the planned features and paying for settlements, than by not rolling them out.
It makes more business sense that way.
But, since the matter has been under so much public scrutiny, maybe there will be some action.
What do you think? Is planned obsolescence justified?
