LXer: Samsung, Oppo facing landmark lawsuits over pre-installed apps

The Shanghai Consumer Rights Protection Commission has sued Samsung (and Chinese OEM Oppo) for loading up devices with crapware.

The commission said that the models involved were Samsung SM-N9008S, with 44 apps pre-installed, and the Oppo X9007 model, with 71.

The bloatware issue has become a serious concern for smartphone buyers with the Shenzen Consumer Council called on smartphone manufacturers to allow consumers to remove pre-installed apps from their phones previous year.

In response, the group has filed the lawsuits in a Shanghai court, as a way to discourage smartphone vendors from weighing their products down with pre-installed software.

The Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court said on Wednesday that it has already accepted the separate cases against Guangdong Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Co Limited and Tianjin Samsung Telecommunications Technology Co Limited, according to ECNS. And it’s also worth mentioning that the Find 7a has several user guides baked in, with their own shortcut buttons – that wouldn’t exactly qualify as bloatware apps in the traditional definition.

As such, this infringed the consumers’ rights to know.

Some users have complained that apps like dictionaries, games, online shopping portals, and others are using data in the background, chewing through allowances and racking up larger monthly bills without the express knowledge of the owners themselves. However, it at all they do add them, they should oblige their users by informing what apps have been installed and also how they could be removed.

As a remedy, the commission is asking manufacturers to make it clear what apps come preinstalled on the product packaging (this would be especially hilarious in the case of Oppo) and provide customers with detailed instructions on how to remove them. “This is something that is very much necessary for the healthy development of the whole industry”, he said.

In this regard, Samsung and Oppo have recently been targeted by lawsuits filed by consumers in China. Not everybody likes bloatware on their phones, and a Chinese consumer protection group is not going to sit back and watch as companies fill their smartphones with unnecessary apps.