Apple has been slapped with a $2 million fine in Brazil for selling iPhones without a charger, adding to its many problems with watchdogs.

In addition to levying a hefty fine (10,546,442.48 Brazilian real), São Paulo-based consumer protection foundation Procon on Friday also accused Apple of misleading advertising, selling defective products, maintaining unfair contract terms, and not repairing a product still under warranty.

“Apple needs to understand that in Brazil there are solid laws and institutions for consumer protection,” Procon executive director Fernando Capez said in a statement. “It needs to respect these laws and these institutions.”

The iPhone 12 launched last year with a Lightning-to-USB-C cable, but no power adapter or earbuds as used to be typical. According to Apple, excluding the power adapter reduces the box size, allowing it to ship more at one time. Smaller packaging also helps reduce annual carbon emissions.

When Procon reportedly contacted Cupertino last year, asking for clarification, the company “never offered a convincing explanation,” according to Brazilian news site Tilt. Apple can still appeal the decision, ask Procon to reevaluate, or settle it in court.

Official 20W USB-C chargers are currently sold separately by Apple for 219 Brazilian real ($40). It’s not inconceivable, though, that the company could ship the products together. France, for instance, insists that every mobile phone include some form of hands-free kit or headset in a bid to protect children under the age of 14 from exposure to electromagnetic waves. A 75,000 euro ($89,000) criminal fine was enough to convince Apple to ship its hardware with EarPods and a Lightning-to-USB-C cable.

High demand for the iPhone 12 allowed Apple to one-up Samsung in Q4 2020 smartphone sales, giving the Cupertino-based manufacturer its first leadership position since Q4 2016. Samsung still kept its position as the largest manufacturer based on full-year results, shipping 253 million smartphones against Apple’s 199.8 million devices.

In December, Italy’s Competition Authority (AGCM) fined Apple €10 million ($12 million) for “aggressive and misleading iphone commercial activities”.
The regulator said the tech company failed to clarify that it’s under certain circumstances, when it advertised several iphone models as water resistant.

On Friday last week, a federal jury in Marshall, Texas, ordered Apple to pay $308.5 million for infringement on technology used iTunes and App Store.

The patent has been held by Personalized Media Communications, which brought the case before court in back in 2015, alleging that Apple infringed its patent on FairPlay.

Personalized Media Communication expert explained a file encrypted on FairPlay as a piece of media content or software app, digitally encrypted and can only be decrypted by an authorized user device based on user-specific or device-specific decryption information.

The expert had set a $240 million price tag for what Apple owes Personalized Media Communication in royalties for using its technology. But the jury ordered Apple to pay a running royalty, which is the price determined by the sales of licensed products or processes.

Earlier this month, a US judge certified the class-action status of a consumer-led lawsuit over the butterfly keyboard used in Apple MacBooks, which controversy has been raging for over two years now.

Several MacBook owners in seven US states had filed class-action lawsuits against Apple in 2018 after complaints that the “Butterfly” keyboard fails. They claimed Apple knew the butterfly keyboards in certain MacBook models dating back to 2015 were prone to failure, but decided to continue selling them anyways.

The main problem with the butterfly keyboard is dust getting inside and preventing the keys from working. And replacing it costs about $400 to $700, a huge price many of the Apple users don’t want to pay.

If the class-action lawsuit is successful, affected MacBook owners may be financially compensated. However, it has become a-one-case-too-many for Apple in many of its markets around the world.

How do Nigerians define unemployment?

According to Investopedia, unemployment is “the term for when a person, who is actively seeking a job is unable to find work.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines it as “the state of not having a job.” In the terms of Wikipedia, unemployment is “the state of being without any work yet looking for work.” Judging from these definitions, one can say that when a person is unemployed if he does not have a paid job, say the regular 9-5 jobs. This may be the reason the rate of unemployment is said to be very high in Nigeria.

But, does unemployment truly mean a lack of paid jobs as the above definitions imply?

According to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), unemployment refers to when “persons above a specified age {are} not being in paid employment or self-employment but {are}currently available for work during the reference period” (as cited in Wikipedia). With this definition, one can see that so long as a person has a source of income, he is employed. This also means that a person doesn’t have to work for hours daily to be classified as employed.

So, why has the self-employed not been duly categorised as employed?

It may interest you to know that Nigerians, including government officials, have categorised jobs into three: temporary jobs, permanent jobs, and businesses. Permanent jobs are usually identified as government-paid works, jobs in multinational companies, and any other one that “pays well” and has some levels of job security. Only people in this type of job are considered employed by Nigerians. Businesses, on the other hand, stand for people that voluntarily decided to be their own bosses. This category, however, does not cover people, who are victims of circumstances and those that have no physical office.

Temporary jobs, also known as casual jobs, are never considered as employment in Nigeria. This is the type of job people say, “There is no work so he is managing this one.” The workers here also brand themselves as unemployed. For instance, a bricklayer will be quick to tell you, “I no get job o” because he hasn’t seen himself as having one. However, casual workers change their employment status by themselves when they begin to earn handsomely from their work. By then, they group themselves as entrepreneurs and register among the employed.

So, is it proper to brand casual workers as unemployed? Answers are left for you to provide.

There are also a group of persons that have never been identified as belonging to the labour force. Lots of money comes into their hands but they are not even gazed upon as employed or even having sources of income. These are those that belong to the informal sector of the economy.

Has anyone else wondered if motor-park touts (aka agebro) are regarded as employed by the authorities? Yes, Nigerians tell them to “go and look for jobs”, but has it occurred to you that they actually have jobs? What about beggars, street hawkers, medicine vendors (in buses), bouncers (in clubs and parties), and the rest of them? What employment status is created for them? Ok, shall we look at the illegal professions such as prostitution, cybercrime, fraud, pickpocket, illicit drug peddling, and so on? If we keep morals and the law aside, can we say these people are unemployed? What status defines them? Do we still believe they are victims of circumstances or that they chose to be in those professions? No matter how we look at them, these people have sources of income. Since one does not have to deal in legal jobs to be defined as employed, people doing the above-mentioned jobs are not unemployed.

The essence of this essay is to draw the attention of the concerned authorities to the modalities used in measuring unemployment in Nigeria. The essay hopes to make it known that the number of Nigerians categorised as unemployed may actually have jobs that put food on their tables, clothes on their backs, and roofs over their heads. The essay hopes to influence Nigerian authorities and other stakeholders to review and redefine unemployment in the country.