Planned Obsolescence

In December 1924 the world's leading lamp makers, including Osram, Philips, General Electric's affiliates and Compagnie des Lampes, formed the Phoebus cartel in Geneva. Besides dividing markets, they agreed to cut the rated life of a household bulb from the 1,500 to 2,000 hours then common to 1,000 hours, tested members' bulbs at a central laboratory, and fined companies whose lamps lasted too long. Average bulb life fell by about a third within a decade. Markus Krajewski reconstructed the scheme from the cartel's own archives; it is the best-documented case of an industry engineering a shorter product life on purpose.

In 2017 Apple confirmed what users had measured: software updates slowed older iPhones whose batteries had aged. The company said the purpose was to prevent sudden shutdowns, not to push upgrades, and it cut the price of battery replacements. Regulators focused on the silence. France's consumer-fraud authority fined Apple 25 million euros in 2020 because customers had not been told that the updates could slow their phones, and the company paid up to $500 million in a US class settlement and $113 million to a group of US states, without admitting wrongdoing. Whatever the intent, owners who were not told had decided whether to replace a phone or a battery on incomplete information.