Apple has stopped shipping in-box chargers with the iPhone 12 series due to environmental reasons. This means that the retail box of the iPhones 12 and later series only includes the smartphone and the Lightning to USB Type-C cable. Users have to buy the charger separately. The change has not been good in many markets. For example, Brazil’s Justice Ministry fined Apple one million dollars along with suspending iPhone sales in the country. The country has now seized hundreds of iPhones from retail stores.
As reported by Tecnoblog, Brazil’s federal district-based consumer protection regulator has seized iPhones from authorized Apple resellers and issued stories in Brazil’s capital city, Brasilia. Why? because the Cupertino-based company doesn’t sell charger with iphones,
The operation is codenamed “Operation Discharge,” according to the report, and is aimed at forcing Apple to comply with a local law that requires smartphone makers to ship chargers in the box.
As mentioned above, Apple has removed the chargers with the iPhone 12 series. it has also been updated iphone 11 with a new, more compact box without the charger.
What is Apple’s response?
According to the report, Apple Brazil has requested the government to allow the sale of the iPhone in the country. It filed an injunction to ensure the sale of iPhones in Brazil.
According to a report in MacMagazine, Judge Diego Camara Alves has allowed the company to continue selling iPhones in Brazil pending a final ruling. The judge believes that the company is not violating any consumer rights and claims that the Brazilian regulator is “abusing its power” with such a decision.
Apple, on the other hand, says it is confident it will win the legal dispute and that customers “are aware of the different options for charging and connecting their devices.”
In a related news, the European Union earlier this year approved a law that mandates a USB Type-C port for a whole range of electronic devices such as mobile phones, tablets and headphones. After this, Apple will be forced to abandon its old Lightning port on its iPhones for the USB-C already used by its Android competitors. Meanwhile, India is also planning to adopt the USB-C variant as the common charging port for smart devices.