Planned obsolescence

❗Article Status Notice: This Article is a stub

---

This article is underdeveloped, and needs additional work to meet the wiki's Content Guidelines and be in line with our Mission Statement for comprehensive coverage of consumer protection issues. Learn more ▼

Issues may include:

• This article needs to be expanded to provide meaningful information
• This article requires additional verifiable evidence to demonstrate systemic impact
• More documentation is needed to establish how this reflects broader consumer protection concerns
• The connection between individual incidents and company-wide practices needs to be better established
• The article is simply too short, and lacks sufficient content

How you can help:

• Add documented examples with verifiable sources
• Provide evidence of similar incidents affecting other consumers
• Include relevant company policies or communications that demonstrate systemic practices
• Link to credible reporting that covers these issues
• Flesh out the article with relevant information

This notice will be removed once the article is sufficiently developed. Once you believe the article is ready to have its notice removed, visit the Discord (join here) and post to the #appeals channel, or mention its status on the article's talk page.

Planned obsolescence is a form of maliscious product design that intentionally shortens the lifespan of a product, often in such a way that it fails soon after the legally mandated warranty period. In recent years, software and firmware updates have increasingly been used to augment planned obsolescence, for example by requiring replacement companents to be validated by a whitelist.

Famous Planned Obsolescence Cases

Cases

Year	Company	Product	Details
2017	Apple	iPhones	Apple admitted it had released software updates that could slow down older iPhone models when their batteries degraded. This was allegedly done to prevent unexpected shutdowns caused by aging batteries. This resulted in 3 settlements totaling over USD $600M
2018	Samsung	Galaxy Note 4	Italy’s antitrust body fined Samsung €5 million regarding software updates that allegedly slowed down certain Galaxy phones.
2016	HP	Printer	HP released firmware updates for "Dynamic Security", causing printers to show error messages or stop working if a non-HP-branded cartridge was installed. Multiple settlements were reached totaling over USD $5M between 2016 and 2020.

See Also

• IPhone planned obsolescence incidencies
  

References

1. REDIRECT Self-destructive design