French Government Quizzes Apple Over Exploding iPhones

Government officials in France are apparently meeting with Apple representatives today after recent reports of iphone and ipod touches overheating and screens shattering.

According to reports from Reuters, a senior executive from Apple is due to meet France’s consumer affairs minister Herve Novelli today to discuss the problems which have also been reported in the UK and the US.

“Herve Novelli will stress the responsibility held by companies regarding general security requirements when they sell equipment to consumers,” the minister’s office told Reuters.

The European Commission said in a press conference earlier this month that it had contacted Apple about the iPhone and iPod Touch problems reported by some consumers in Europe.

Last month an iPod Touch belonging to an 11 year old girl from Liverpool apparently “exploded”. The girl’s father Ken Stanborough, 47, said that he dropped the device which then made a “hissing noise” and eventually exploded “there was a pop, a big puff of smoke and it went 10ft in the air” he reportedly told the newspaper.

The reported incident in Liverpool, follows the apparent emergence of similar cases in the US. Late last month, a reporter from Seattle’s KIRO TV station reported how the station used the Freedom of Information Act to get the Consumer Product Safety Commission to turn over 800-pages which referred to issues of iPods overheating.

Apple has so far refused to comment on the case – claiming that it has not seen the device in question so cannot verify the incident.

Earlier this year, Hewlett-Packard recalled some of its lithium-ion notebook batteries, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced, after two reports of overheated batteries resulting in fires that caused minor property damage, though no injuries were reported.