Police Decide Not to Prosecute Apple CEO Tim Cook and Others Over Alleged Intentional iPhone Performance Throttling

Dismissed in Mid-Last Month Due to 'Insufficient Evidence'

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Jang Sehee] The police have decided not to prosecute Apple CEO Tim Cook and others who were accused of deliberately degrading iPhone performance.

On the 17th, the Gangnam Police Station in Seoul announced that the case against Tim Cook, Apple CEO, and Daniel Dischico, CEO of Apple Korea, who were accused of violating the Information and Communications Network Act, was dismissed last month due to insufficient evidence.

A police official stated, "This is a matter that was previously dismissed by both the police and prosecution with a non-prosecution (no charges) decision," adding, "It was judged that it is difficult to see that Apple distributed a program that could interfere with the operation of the information and communication system without justifiable reasons."

The police began investigating after receiving a complaint from the civic group Consumer Sovereignty Citizens' Association in January. The group claimed at the time that "Apple updated the iPhone operating system (iOS) in 2017 without justifiable reasons or prior explanation, causing the installation of software that degraded performance," and filed the complaint.

The suspicion of Apple's intentional performance degradation began in 2017 when operating system software updates were applied to iPhone 6 and 7 models.

At that time, Apple explained that the update was "to prevent the device from shutting down when the battery is old," but users raised suspicions that the performance degradation update was intentionally applied to sell newer iPhones.

The group also filed a complaint against Tim Cook and others in 2018 on charges of fraud and obstruction of business, but the prosecution decided not to indict, judging that there was no evidence to support the charges.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.