Again, Apple to pay $113m as settlement for throttling older iPhones

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Apple Inc will pay $113 million (£85 million) to settle allegations from 33 USA states and the District of Columbia that it slowed down iPhones to mask battery issues and get users to purchase new devices, state officials announced on Wednesday. The Washington Post first reported the news.

Apple, which has denied wrongdoing, declined to comment on the settlement.

This new fine was announced on Thursday morning in Arizona, the culmination of a lawsuit brought by more than 30 USA states.

The tech titan has since promised to create a website that will make it explicitly clear if an iOS update would affect a phone's battery and performance.

Apple agreed to the hefty fine after accepting that a 2017 software update slowed the performance of older iPhone models. The company has also advised technicians to inform customers that they should keep their devices up to date with the latest software update.

"My colleagues and I are trying to get the attention of these big tech companies, and you would hope a multimillion-dollar judgment with more than 30 states will get their attention", Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said in an interview. "I'm committed to holding these goliath technology companies to account if they hide the truth from their users", added Brnovich. The company generates $275 billion annual revenue and boasts a market value of $2 trillion.

According to a report by MacRumors, Apple is reportedly getting a number of users coming in to their service centres complaining about issues of a green tint on the display, as well as screen flickers that are happening when the iPhones are in dark environments, and are kept at below 90 percent brightness. However, state prosecutors still fault Apple for concealing the move from the public until December 2017. It follows a previous settlement requiring Apple to pay up to $500 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought in California. The offer ended in early October.

Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.