Apple confirms government inquiry over device slowdowns

Apple said on Tuesday that it has been contacted by government agencies about the intentional slow down of older devices and that it is in the process of answering their questions.

“We have received questions from some government agencies and we are responding to them,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement emailed to The Hill, without specifying which agencies.

“As we told our customers in December, we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades,” the spokesperson noted.

{mosads}

Bloomberg on Tuesday reported that Apple had been contacted by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of inquiries into whether Apple broke securities laws in revealing that it slows its phones down as they age to preserve deteriorating battery life.

Apple apologized to consumers after disclosing this in December.  

“We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize,” they said in a statement at the time.

The company then announced that it would offer discounted battery replacements to all customers with affected phones and that it will be more transparent about the updates in the future.

Letters from agencies aren’t the first inquiries that Apple has received from the government on the matter.

Earlier in January, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) sent a letter to the company asking for more answers on why it wasn’t transparent in its practice of slowing batteries.

The company is also facing a class-action lawsuit from customers who say Apple mislead them by slowing iPhones down without publicly disclosing it.