Tim Cook’s Chinese nightmare seems to be going from bad to worse with every passing day. If they weren’t busy dealing with falling sales in the Oriental market, their phones are now going up in smoke. Literally! China has even gone on record to say “Apple has an exploding iPhones problem.”
An autonomous consumer forum, called the Shanghai Consumer Council (SHCC), announced that between September 1 and November 30th this year, eight iPhones had exploded in China.
The Council gave examples of two specific cases and attached photos as well —
Mr. Zhang reported to the SHCC that his iPhone 6 (bought in November 2014) suddenly started smoking and spontaneously self-combusted in standby mode on Sept. 30 this year.
Ms. Chen reported to the SHCC that an iPhone 6s Plus (bought in March 2015) spontaneously self-combusted on Aug. 31 this year, cracking the screen and the phone’s back. Apple gave Chen a new phone, same model, without offering a detailed explanation.
Apple has denied all allegations of manufacturing problems and gone on the offensive. They claim that the phones show clear marks of external damage and so, the explosion (or “thermal event”, as apple likes to call it) was a result of user negligence.
“[The phones] have clearly shown that external physical damage happened to them which led to the thermal event. [We have] found no cause for concern with these products.”
This is the second instance of a dispute between Apple and China in less than two months. Earlier in November, the China Consumers Association, a State-backed consumer forum, had called Apple out publicly to explain why their iPhone 6 and 6s devices were switching off on their own for no reason at all.
Even then, Apple had denied the problem. However, they did talk about releasing a software patch in China to gather more information about the “alleged” problem. While not satisfactory, there wasn’t much of a protest on Apple’s reply.
This time, however, exploding iPhones have really put China on the edge. More importantly, it’s the sheer number of phones that seem to be exploding, or experiencing some variation of a “thermal event.”
“[…] about the iPhone explosions, SHCC said it had received 2,763 consumer complaints of Apple products from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30, twice that of 2015. Nearly half of the complaints were made in the past two months alone.”
It looks like thing might get too hot to handle for Apple, and we’re hoping against hope that they come up with a valid explanation soon. For now, they’re doling out their standard spiel: “We encourage any customer who experiences an issue with an Apple product to visit an Apple Store or an Apple Authorized Service Provider, or to contact Apple Support.”
Boy, aren’t we reassured to hear that Apple is on top of things as usual! :-/