Apple has to pay-out over $2 million Australian dollars – that was the decision following an Australian federal court hearing on Friday. The fine is for misleading consumers in Australia with their 4G marketing. This happened just a couple of months after the launch of the New iPad a.k.a iPad 3.
New iPad ‘3’ 4G claims by Apple leads to Australian fine
The fine came about following the Australian Competition & Consumer Commissions complaint regarding the marketing by Apple of the wireless capabilities of their New iPad 3. The argument was that Apple were marketing the iPad as having Wi-Fi + 4G in Australia when in fact this is misleading as it leads to consumers to believe that he iPad can connect to a 4G network with a SIM card in Australia. 4G LTE is only available in the US on Verizon and AT&T and Canada on Bell, Rogers and Telus. Users not on these networks are reverted to 3G for the receiving and sending of data.
Apple did put stickers on the boxes of iPads in some countries stating that 4G LTE was only available in the US and Canada. Apple has said that anyone in Australia could have a refund if they were unhappy with their iPad and have paid the fine.
The term 4G in Australia is used to typically describe LTE and WiMAX networks and according to Colin Golvan, commission lawyer, consumers took the sign from the 4G marketing that the iPad would work with their LTE network, which is Telstra in Australia. He went on to say that had consumers realized this was not the case, they would not have made the purchase. This may see Apple changing the marketing in Australia to say “Wi-Fi + Cellular”, after all it has in some other countries.
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