Industry Committee on March 1st, 2018

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I'm thinking about in the future, if you have an issue like this, if your people on the front line are seeing some problems, if people are posting on the Internet—with the Internet people are becoming aware of things very quickly now. Has there been an update to your internal communications to improve them so if something like this happens in the future, consumers won't be as edgy about the product?

[Jacqueline Famulak]

I think one thing that we realized was that we communicated as much as we possibly could about the unexpected shutdown problem, the steps we took, and how people should update their software. December 28 was when we said to ourselves, “We need to talk directly to our customers, do it as soon as possible, and not let the noise out there affect them."

Yes, the lesson was learned. You always have to listen to your customers, and you need to react quickly when they have concerns.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Was Apple aware of how many customers out there perceived the company to be engaging in this term that was brought up with the questioning, this planned obsolescence thing?

[Jacqueline Famulak]

Absolutely not.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I'm just curious, why would an owner of an iPhone, knowing that replacing the battery might restore the performance of their device, choose to replace their iPhone if they knew just by replacing the battery they would get their performance back?

[Jacqueline Famulak]

Our newer devices have better features, and there's so much.... Even in the short period of time since the iPhone 6 was released to today, there are changes in the way that people use their smart phone devices, and so they may choose to go with the more modern, updated features on the new devices and choose to update that way rather than just replace the battery.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Okay. It appears that the wait time to get the batteries replaced is eight weeks for someone who has an older phone. I know now that I depend on my iPhone, and an eight-week wait might be....

[Jacqueline Famulak]

We're working as fast as we can.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

That's good, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We're going to move to Mr. Sheehan.

You have five minutes.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to our presenters.

I have a few questions.

We're trying to figure out the number of complaints. Obviously, you must track the number of complaints as they relate to the iPhone 6. Are you able to share with the committee how many complaints you've received about that?

[Jacqueline Famulak]

We received complaints about the unexpected shutdown and we were tracking that. That's how we sent off our engineers to solve the problem.

We have different categories that we record customer issues in, but I don't have numbers specifically for Canada.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Would you say it's most of the phones or a small number of phones?

[Jacqueline Famulak]

I would say it's a very small number of phones.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

In talking with my constituents in Sault Ste. Marie who have iPhones and have had iPhones all along—they had the iPhone 4, the iPhone 5—their question is why the iPhone 6.

[Jacqueline Famulak]

The iPhones 4 and 5 were not affected because they didn't have the performance features that started coming out. As I described, every phone is better, has more stuff that you can do, and has enhanced components, so the 4 and 5 are not affected. They're also a smaller form factor. It started with the 6.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Is it the same battery in the 4, the 5, and the 6?

[Jacqueline Famulak]

I believe it's a different battery. I can confirm that for you, if you'd like me to, but I think it has to do largely with the number of features and the form factor of the 4 and the 5.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

That would be important information to have. Is it the same battery in the 4 and 5 that was put in the 6, and it's a performance issue, or is it a different battery, and why?

[Jacqueline Famulak]

I'm no engineer, but I think even if it was the same battery, the performance of those devices was less than the new devices.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Are the 7, the 8, and whatnot experiencing the same problems as the 6?

[Jacqueline Famulak]

Again, the new phones, the 8 and the 10 have a lot more features, and they're engineered differently. They have different batteries and different components in them, so they're not experiencing the problem.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

There are different batteries that are put in the phones at different times.

[Jacqueline Famulak]

Yes.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Okay.

We'll need some engineers to help us through that.

In your message to your customers, you talked about your warranty. MP Carrie pointed out the length of time it's taking, and people are complaining about replacements for those batteries. People complain that because they didn't know it was an issue, as some of my colleagues on this side of the table have identified, they went out and purchased a new phone. They just thought the phone was at its end of life and not performing well, so they went out and purchased one out of pocket. That was a challenge.

Whether it was intentional or unintentional, one would assume that profits are going to peak. Sales went up during that time frame. Are you able to verify that sales went up for—