[4] False advertising, Apple fined!

Compiled from: Beijing Market Regulation Bureau
 
On May 24, Apple Electronic Products Trading (Beijing) Co., Ltd. was imposed an administrative penalty of 200,000 yuan by the Dongcheng District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau of Beijing for publishing false advertisements.

 
Case review
On February 14, 2022, law enforcement officers, acting on a tip-off, browsed the party's above-mentioned website and discovered that it had published advertisements on the website for the MacBook Air products it sold. The advertisements contained statements such as “The 8-core CPU is blazing fast and power-efficient.” and “The M1 chip has the fastest CPU we've ever created.” The word “<Advertisement>” appeared in the upper right corner of the page.

Investigation revealed that the above page constitutes a commercial advertisement published by the party for the sale of a MacBook Air laptop. The M1 chip in the MacBook Air features an 8-core CPU, comprising four high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores. In October 2021, Apple introduced the MacBook Pro equipped with M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. The M1 Pro and M1 Max chips feature a new 10-core CPU consisting of eight high-performance cores and two high-efficiency cores, delivering up to 70 percent faster performance than the M1.

In summary, at the time of the incident, the central processing unit equipped with the M1 chip was not the fastest one created by Apple. While your entity simultaneously sold MacBook Air models equipped with the M1 chip and MacBook Pro models equipped with the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, the advertisement for the MacBook Air claimed that its M1 chip “features our fastest central processing unit ever created.” This content is inconsistent with the facts. The above advertisement content was edited, produced, and uploaded for publication by the party itself, and the advertising expenses cannot be calculated.

Pursuant to Article 55, Paragraph 1 of the Advertising Law of the People's Republic of China (2018), the Dongcheng District Market Supervision Administration of Beijing ordered the party to rectify the aforementioned illegal act, cease publishing the aforementioned advertisement, eliminate the adverse effects within the corresponding scope, and imposed a fine of RMB 200,000.
 
 
"Advertising Law of the People's Republic of China"
Article 55
Whoever, in violation of the provisions of this Law, publishes false advertisements shall be ordered by the market supervision and administration department to cease publishing the advertisements, ordered the advertiser to eliminate the impact within the corresponding scope, and be fined not less than three times but not more than five times the advertising expenses; if the advertising expenses cannot be calculated or are obviously low, a fine of not less than 200,000 yuan but not more than 1,000,000 yuan shall be imposed; if there are more than three illegal acts within two years or other serious circumstances, a fine of not less than five times but not more than ten times the advertising expenses shall be imposed, and if the advertising expenses cannot be calculated or are obviously low, a fine of not less than 1,000,000 yuan but not more than 2,000,000 yuan shall be imposed, and the business license may be revoked, and the advertising review authority shall revoke the advertising review approval document and not accept its advertising review application for one year.
 
 
[1] The author's perspective
In recent years, amendments to advertising law have gradually raised public vigilance regarding advertising wording, and the use of extreme terms such as “best” and “number one” has been decreasing. As a major international corporation, Apple should be highly attentive to this aspect, but this time, perhaps out of great confidence in its product, it overlooked the relevant provisions of laws and regulations.
 
The author suggests that although highlighting distinctive features can serve as a selling point for a product, terms such as “best” and “number one” are overly absolute and should therefore be avoided in advertising and promotion. Otherwise, once verified, the company will face administrative penalties.