Comprehensive foreign media reports, recently, because the iPhone is not equipped with a charger in the box, violating the consumer protection law, a Brazilian court ordered Apple to compensate a consumer with 5,000 Brazilian reals (about 7,000 yuan).
According to Article 39 of Brazil's Consumer Protection Act (CDC), "collocation sales" is an abusive and prohibited practice in Brazil, so it is not allowed to sell mobile phones separately from charging plugs.
Apple said in its defense that the iPhone is not equipped with a charger for environmental reasons, and the Lightning to USB-C cable that came with the iPhone can be used with any charger. The USB-C interface is not unique to Apple products, and consumers can use other USB-C chargers to charge. Apple also said it had previously informed consumers about selling chargers separately.
Apple also said the decision to remove the charger from the iPhone 12 could save it 2 million tons of carbon emissions a year, or about 10 percent of Apple's annual emissions.
Apple's decision to cancel the charger began in 2020. At the Apple conference in September 2020, Apple canceled the charger that came with the Apple Watch S6 in the name of environmental protection, and canceled the charger of the iPhone 12 series for the same reason at the October conference. Since then, the mobile phones after the iPhone 12 series have no longer come with charging heads and wired headphones as standard with the box, and iPads, Apple Watches, etc. are no longer equipped with chargers.
After Apple is no longer equipped with chargers, many domestic and foreign mobile phone manufacturers have also followed suit. Nandu Wan Finance Agency reporter noted that in December last year, some netizens left a message on the "leadership message board" of the People's Network, believing that mobile phone manufacturers were "in the name of environmental protection" without chargers, which actually increased the purchase cost of consumers. In this regard, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also mentioned Apple in its reply:
Regarding the separation of mobile phones and power adapters, manufacturers in the premise of protecting consumers' right to know and the right to choose independently, develop their own marketing strategies, in the promotion of sales, product packaging and list clearly inform consumers of products and accompanying materials, by the consumers themselves choose whether to buy or not.
At present, some manufacturers do not attach chargers according to the convention, breaking the inertial thinking of consumers, such as Apple, Samsung, etc., and there are also cases of simultaneously selling two versions without chargers and with chargers, such as Xiaomi, which are in line with the principle of consumer autonomy.
On the other hand, because this issue does not involve personal health and life and property safety, etc., the individual needs of consumers vary greatly, and the feasibility of industry management needs to be further studied.
In the next step, we will call on enterprises to revise their marketing strategies, promote manufacturers to effectively take into account the relationship between the actual needs of users' consumption, environmental protection and commercial interests, encourage and support the marketing strategies of users' personalized choices, and protect users' right to know and their right to make their own choices.
Written by Yan Zhaoxin, reporter of Nandu Bay Finance Agency