A few hours before Apple’s launch of the iPhone 14 lineup, the Brazilian government announced that they would be putting a sales ban on iPhones without chargers.
This implies that iPhones without chargers will not be sold in the nation of Brazil.
The Justice Ministry of Brazil fined Apple 12.27 Brazilian reais, about 2.4 million dollars, for selling iPhones without a charger. The National Communications Agency of Brazil has also revoked the iPhone 12 and 13 sales licenses.
Since December, the Brazilian government has been investigating Apple for selling an “incomplete product and deliberate discrimination against consumers.”
The tech giant stopped boxing its phones with adapter chargers in 2020 during the release of the iPhone 12, explaining that it was a measure to reduce carbon emissions.
Apple has stated that they are excluding chargers from the latest iPhone boxes because of environmental issues, but the Brazilian government says there is no environmental research or facts that claim chargers are harmful to the environment and warrant the sales of phones without them.
However, the Brazilian government was not the first establishment to question the new iPhone boxing method.
Still, the company was able to shut down criticism by presenting an analysis that showed that the company was able to save 861,000 metric tonnes of copper, zinc ore, and tin after just a year of removing adapters from the iPhone boxes.
Apple replied to this ban with an official statement stating, ” we have already won several court rulings in Brazil on this matter, and we are confident that our customers are aware of the various options for charging and connecting their devices.”
Apparently, the government is not happy with Apple taking extra money for chargers from customers after they have already purchased the phone, and since Apple is still producing these chargers that they claim are harmful to the environment, what problem exactly are they solving?
What do you think about the legal battle? Will Apple be able to overcome it as they have done with other suits over the years, or is this just the starting point as other nations join Brazil in the fight?
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Photo by Zana Latif
