Brazil’s ‘no charger’ fine will cost Apple just 0.00007% of its 2020 revenue

Remember when Apple stopped including power bricks with iPhones last year? While the company claimed it was all for the environment, people with who didn’t have chargers were furious they’d now have to buy a separate expensive brick to be able to use their new phones.

But while most of us just bitch and moaned while forking over our hard-earned cash to Cook and co., one country decide to take action: Brazil.

In October, Procon-SP, the consumer interest agency for Sao Paulo state, asked Apple to provide justification for not including the charging brick in iPhone boxes. It wasn’t satisfied with the tech giant’s environment-saving answer and said that the brick was an important part of the phone’s package. 

The agency even asked Apple if it would consider discounting the iPhone 12 since it’s not including a charger. However, Apple didn’t change anything.

According to Brazilian publication Tilt, over the weekend, the agency has fined Apple for R$10.55 million ($1.92 million). Apart from not including chargers in iPhone boxes, it has also accused Apple of misleading advertisement of iPhone’s water-resistance and unfair term of repairs.

What does that mean for Apple? Nothing. What do you think $2 million is for Apple? Let’s do some MATH.

For convenience, let’s round up the fine to $2 million (what’s measly $80K to Timmy?).. The price of the base model of the iPhone 12 is $799. So, the fine is equal to 2,503 iPhones. For context, Apple sold 18 million iPhone 12 units in Q4 2020 just in China.

The company’s more expensive item, the Mac Pro, starts at $5,999. With $2 million, the agency could get 333 Mac Pro units. Happy days for employees.

If we believe Statista, Apple’s annual revenue in 2020 was $274.5 billion. So this fine is just 0.00007285% of its revenue. Pocket change.

You get the gist. This fine doesn’t hurt the company any way, and it could get away with this minor amount and it can keep peddling iPhones without including chargers or dropping the price.. Capitalism for the win.