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In Australia, Apple Fined $2.5 Million For '4G' Advertising Claims
Whiney Mac Fanboy writes "Apple has agreed to pay a $2.25 million (AUD) fine (along with 300k legal costs) to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission for misleading advertising. Apple misrepresented their iPad product as being a '4G' device, when in fact they're only compatible with a very small percentage of 4G networks around the world. The Age online has the full story."
10 minutes of iPad sales?
A reviewer judge has called for info on how much investment Apple has in Oz also how many ppl were affected.
...and the resulting exposure probably saved them tens of millions in advertising.
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Funny how these markets and lawyers and politicians always leave-out relevant facts. "Alan Archibald, QC, acting for Apple, told the court it was irrelevant how many iPads had been sold or returned because Apple had offered to provide full refunds, so there was no loss to customers. "What conceiveable damage might there be?", he said."
The guy forgets that Apple only offered these refunds AFTER the government started prosecuting them. That alone is reason enough to fine them, because had the government not existed, then Apple would have happily lied with its "iPhone 4G" campaign and refused to refund the cash to the ripped-off Australians. (Also refunding the phone doesn't mean customers are exempt from the 2-3 year contracts. Now they are phoneless, but still stuck with a bill.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
"This piece of plastic wont work on our networks?"
I doubt it's the kind of advertising they either wanted or needed frankly. That being said it is their own fault and they deserve every lick the ACCC feels like giving them, certainly very few/if any people in the Australian community are supporting them in this, even the most rabid applebois that I know were saying that Apple was pretty stupid with their actions. That they are trying to block the galaxy s3 here also hasn't made them very many friends either.
>Apple has agreed to pay a $2.25m fine and $300,000 towards the ACCC's legal costs but Federal Court judge Mordy Bromberg, who must approve the settlement, questioned why there was no information for him about the number of affected customers and Apple's total worth.
>"I don't know whether we're talking about a corporation that makes $10m or $300m," he said. "How do I know that it (the penalty) is meaningful for Apple if you don't put before me any idea of what its financial position is?"
From the article you linked, which suggests the judge is saying, "we are going to smack these folks around, and love it, but are we smacking them around hard enough, maybe you should raise the bar ACCC or tell me why we are only going this hard then i'll let them off light."
They sort of buried the lead a bit phrasing it that way. The last I heard, there are zero 4G towers in the entirety of Australia. Yeah, none. So now the law suit makes a lot of sense. A normal person would have removed "4G" from advertising if the entire country didn't have it. When it rolled out on phones and tablets in the US, only large cities had it and even that was controversial and had some small, local law suits. But zero towers in the country? That's just stupid. I see why Apple got fined.
Socialist paradise
Immigrating recently from Europe in Australia, I can tell you Australia isn't at any rate a socialist country, much less a paradise for socialists.
We have 4G LTE, they sell and advertise the product as 4G but it will never run on a 4G network in this country.
As far as it being a slap on the wrist, the judge seems to agree and has suggested that numbers need to be provided so that he can make the fine meaningful for apple.
BTW Consumer protection laws, don't you guys try to stop snake oil salespeople on your side of the ditch, or do you prefer to just let them roll with it?
Just because they're technically right doesn't mean it isn't misleading advertising, which is what they were fined for.
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It's a 4G device that's not compatible with the 4G network in AU. The physical device will not work at 4G in AU, even if it does in Canada. Read your own link. 4G is defined for networks only, not devices. It isn't a 4G device unless it's carrier equipment. User devices can be 4G compatible, but it's the network, not the device, that defines 4G. And iPad can't use 4G in AU, yet is being advertised as such. That's a lie.
And yes, it is a moving target. 4G has changed greatly from when it was first used. Yes, the ITU never changed it's oficial definition, but took what, 10 years from the first use of the term until they approved a definition? And they don't define any interoperability, so "4G" is locally defined for devices, as an international standard is useless for defining interoperability (And the ITU definition doesn't concern interoperability anyway) if every country uses unique frequencies and the device doesn't use the local frequencies.
Learn to love Alaska
In Australia we don't take to kindly to snake oil salesmen, it is why we have institutions like the ACCC.
Next we will be coming for their profits that they are shuffling off overseas to avoid taxation, the public discontent is growing with both Google and Apple about this, and the more they mess around and make themselves targets with things like this and trying to get injunctions against the galaxy S3, the closer they come to turning the public against them.
Australia is not like the USA in regards to loving/respecting companies ripping off the system.
This is a consumer protection organisation. They don't give a fuck about your pedantic nitpicking. Australia has 4G* LTE networks. The iPad was advertised as supporting 4G* LTE networks. The iPad did not support Australia's 4G* LTE networks. Ergo, the iPad did not support 4G* LTE networks. End of story. The CONSUMER protection organisation should not have to give a fuck about whether it supports 4G* LTE somewhere else, the question is, could the advertising be expected to give a consumer a reasonable belief that it would work with their 4G* LTE service. The answer is yes, so Apple broke the law. That you believe this is somehow OK for Apple to market in such a misleading way is telling of how little your government protects your consumers, and how brainwashed your consumers are by your corporations.
* Whether LTE is actually 4G is not addressed by this post, and is beside this point for the purposes of this discussion.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Because this isn't just about a lack of coverage or network capacity. There are actual 4G LTE networks in Australia, and Apple was selling a device that wouldn't connect to them but advertising it as 4G.
Actually you have it backwards. There is a 4G standard definition for the rest of the world, then there is the US/Canada. Australia is not the odd one out here.
They sort of buried the lead a bit phrasing it that way. The last I heard, there are zero 4G towers in the entirety of Australia. Yeah, none.
You're woefully misinformed.
The US describes HSPA+ as 4G (in reality it's a 3.5 G technology) we've had that since 2008, in fact we were the first country to have a commercial HSPA+ service.
We've had commercial WIMAX networks since 2009.
All three network operators are deploying LTE as we speak. One telco, Telstra has an active commercial LTE network. In fact this is where the law suit makes a lot of sense, the Ipad does not operate on the same frequency as the LTE networks in Australia so it's limited to 3G technologies (no, Australia does not consider HSPA+ to be "4G"), Apple knew this and falsely advertised the feature deliberately.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
He probably does know. But he can't make a judgement based on what he "knows", only on the evidence that's been placed before him during the case. That's how the law works.
You cannot pay fines with "market cap". It's not actual money.
Yes, it did match the advertising everywhere, that's why they're being investigated in other countries too.
In Australia, it's misleading, period. Whether Apple did it "intentionally" or by gross incompetence is irrelevant.
And a reasonable person would consider that a disclaimer saying it may not be compatible "with all worldwide networks" would apply in case they traveled abroad, because it'd absurd - or, as in this case, illegal - to make a campaign advertising a feature that doesn't work.
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And here we see the deception of the Libertarian viewpoint distilled. It's ok to defraud your customers, so long as whatever you're saying can be considered true somewhere in the world.
Apple Advertises it as a 4G Ipad. In Australia your advertising cannot be MISLEADING. Australia has 4G networks therefore according to the laws if a person could be mislead into believing that the ipad 4G access will work in Australia then they are breaking the laws. This is not about international standards or any of that bullshit, it is purely about consumer protection. If you advertise in Australia your product does X then it bloody well better do X in Australia, not in some foreign country. If Apple don't want to change there advertising then they should live with the consequences of their actions as they have blatantly broken the law even though they were warned BEFORE the ipad was released that they would need to change their advertising.
If it's not interoperable with local networks what will the data rate be?
Again, this is a misinterpretation of what 4G is defined as. 4G is defined as a maximum possible data rate, given by the international standards body. It is possible for the 4G iPad to achieve these rates as that's what the hardware is capable of. Even if Australia had no cellular ability whatsoever, data, voice, 2G, 3G or any identifiable network whatsoever, this would still not change the simple fact that the hardware is capable of achieving those speeds.
Why is this so difficult to understand? Another poster used a wonderful metaphor: If in the US, I purchased an electronic drill that was only compatible with the European electrical grid, and not compatible with the electric grid in the US, no one would attempt to claim that the device, magically, was no longer and electric device. It is still an electric drill, even if it won't work in the the US. It is merely incompatible with grid. The same is true of the 4G iPad in Australia... it is still 4G, irregardless of the incompatibility with the network. Further, Apple made this clear... and then changed their advertising to make it even clearer. It's a simple thing, and simply solved: buy another brand in Australia that is compatible with the 4G networks.
And if you tried to sell an electric drill in Australia that was incompatible with our grid, you'd get shot down exactly the same as Apple is. The device is not fit for purpose. If you say a product can do something, it has to be able to do it here. Australian consumer protection laws are stricter than those in the US. Is this so difficult to understand?
The judge is only allowed to make the ruling based on the evidence presented by both sides. If the prosecution failed to enter as evidence the amount that Apple made from iPhone sales, then this is their omission, not the judge's. A fine equal to the iPhone-related profits made while the misleading advertising was running would have been a strong deterrent, but if no one tells the judge what that amount is then he is not allowed to look it up from random (possibly biased or inaccurate) sources online.
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