Apple sued for false advertising of iPhones

APPLE is facing a lawsuit accusing the company of falsely advertising the storage capacity available in its iPhones, iPads and iPods.

Apple sued for false iPhone advertising

APPLE is facing a lawsuit accusing the company of falsely advertising the storage capacity available in its iPhones, iPads and iPods.

The lawsuit, filed in the northern district of California, says the massive data footprint of the iOS 8 operating software eats into the advertised capacity of Apple’s mobile devices.

“In reality, nothing close to the advertised capacity of the Devices is available to end users. Indeed, the discrepancy between advertised and available capacity is substantial and beyond any possible reasonable expectation,” the plaintiffs’ attorney Jonas Mann wrote in a court filing.

It’s common practice for consumer electronics manufacturers to tout the total memory or storage capacity of their devices excluding pre-loaded operating software or applications.

The plaintiffs’ complaint said Apple does not let users insert memory cards into its devices to increase their storage capacity, a feature that is offered by some rival smartphone manufacturers.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Mr Mann said an iPhone 6 Plus with 16 gigabytes of storage can hold only 12.7 gigabytes of photos, songs, apps and other user data. That is 21 per cent less than the advertised 16 gigabytes of storage. For the 16GB iPhone 6, the available storage is 13 gigabytes, according to the filing.

The suit also alleges that Apple delivers advertisements for its paid iCloud online storage when a devices’ storage becomes nearly full.

The plaintiffs, Apple device owners Paul Orshan and Christopher Endara, both of Miami, Florida, seek to have their complaint certified as a class action.

They are suing Apple under California’s unfair competition and false advertisement laws.

Wall Street Journal