Motorola’s Legal Insight: Misinterpretation or Consumer Confidence Game?

In the summer of this year, a series of laws came into force in the European Union. Among other things, one of them obliged smartphone manufacturers to ensure support for at least five years, and manufacturers really began to declare at least five years of Android updates for their devices. However, it seems that the EU does not actually require anything like that, just no one read the law carefully.

Motorola took a closer look and found an important point to which everything boils down. And its wording at least directly does not require manufacturers any five years of support. From the date of placing on the market and for at least 5 years after this date, manufacturers, importers, or authorized representatives, if they provide security updates, patches, or functionality updates for the operating system, must provide such updates free of charge for all units of the product model with the same operating system. So the emphasis here is that updates must be free for five years, if they are provided at all.

Of course, no one on the market charges for updates anyway.

Motorola’s lawyers believe that the wording does not require manufacturers to support smartphones for any obligatory period. As in many other laws, there may be nuances, and the interpretation of this part of the document may be directly incorrect. But in fact, Motorola in this case plays against users.

Recent moves by major companies, like Samsung promising up to four years of OS updates and five years of security updates, align with Motorola’s interpretation, emphasizing free updates without guaranteeing a specific duration of support. Apple’s strategy is also interesting as it has typically extended support much longer, bringing additional security to users without being directly influenced by legislation.

For consumers, while these legal interpretations might seem to loosen obligations, the competitive nature of the smartphone market still offers extended support as a standard to retain consumer trust.