Apple fined €10M over iPhone waterproofing claims

The Italian Competition Authority, Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato or AGCM, has fined Apple €10 million (around $12 million) for making misleading claims about the waterproofing of its iPhones, Reuters reports. Affected iPhone models go back to 2017’s iPhone 8 and 8 Plus.

In a press release, the AGCM criticized Apple for not being clear enough about its water-resistance claims. It said that claims about iPhones being water-resistant for up to 30 minutes at depths of up to four meters only apply in certain circumstances like controlled lab tests with pure water. The regulator also criticized Apple’s disclaimer that said water damage is not covered as part of the iPhone’s warranty, despite marketing the phones’ water resistance.

This latest fine comes a little over two years after the Italian regulator fined Apple alongside Samsung for throttling older devices with software updates. Apple was fined a total of €10 million for a pair of violations, including not giving its customers enough information about their devices’ batteries, as well as throttling the performance of older iPhones without warning. In the US, “batterygate” eventually led to Apple agreeing to a pair of settlements totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.

-TheVerge