An investigation into Apple was opened in December 2022 for what has been characterized as deceptive business practices. The complaint was made against Apple by the French association Halt Planned Obsolescence (HOP), per Le Monde.
The French prosecution team has made known that the investigation into Apple has found that it has provided “faulty repairability.” The investigation into Apple’s allegedly shady dealings has been handed over to the Directorate-General for Competition, Consumption and Fraud Prevention (DGCCRF), according to the prosecution.
A recent press release mentioned that the investigation would hopefully bring about sanctions against the company. Apple’s practices have reportedly been characterized as associating “the serial numbers of the spare parts with that of a smartphone, notably via microchips, giving the manufacturer the possibility of restricting the repair for unauthorized repairers or of degrading a repaired smartphone with ‘generic’ remotely,” according to the report that was translated into English from French.
This recent investigation comes after Apple agreed to pay France 25 million Euros in February 2020, as part of a penalty that involved “deceptive business practices,” per the report. A report noted that Apple had actively demonstrated that it was slowing down its tech’s capabilities in the country, especially involving older models of phones.
An investigation was also opened in 2018, when a HOP complaint suggested that the tech giant had voluntarily and prematurely aged out the old models of the iPhone, making the performance of the older models subpar compared to the new releases.
