Apple pays 25 million euros fine

Apple has reached an agreement with the competition authority in France to pay a fine of 25 million euros. The background is the technology company's practice of secretly slowing down the speed of older mobile phones by updating the operating system as soon as a newer model is available on the market. Apple argued that this approach should conserve older batteries and extend the life of the devices. In practice, however, Apple's method boils down to the fact that only those users who always buy the new iPhone model can use the latest, secure version of the iOS operating system.

All major technology companies follow a similar approach. Software giants such as Microsoft could easily continue to develop their products continuously instead of launching a new version every three years, which of course has to be paid for. With this practice, the companies increase their profits. Apple made a profit of around 55.3 billion US dollars between October 2018 and September 2019). Microsoft reported a profit of about 16.6 billion US dollars in 2018.