I feel like it’s reasonable to expect a brand to be aware if some organization, even Mossad, placed explosives in 5000 of their items.
It means this company is incompetent and should not be trusted. It’s one thing to have malware injected into software (pretty bad) and another to have physical explosives put into your product.
So if someone steals a box of iphones, adds a few grams of explosives inside each phone, and then resells them or gives them away, then Apple is at fault?
If you buy the boxes from an Apple store, or from an approved distributor, Apple is at fault. What's the meaning of "approved"?
If you buy them from the back of a truck, then no, Apple has no fault of course.
But there's a declaration saying "we had nothing to do with the pagers even though they have our brand". That's different from saying "they were booby-trapped after they left our hands". Not even the company itself is claiming the defense you're using.
The problem is that the company which did the rigging seems to have had an official license. If apple gave away licenses to build things branded apple and they contained explosives, I would blame apple, too.
Every brand in the world is now expected to have the ability to detect and thwart intelligence operations run by Mossad? Like, a yoghurt company needs to have a counter intelligence division?
I think they should have some control over their manufacturing. It’s not so much that the yogurt company has a counter intelligence division, it’s that the yogurt company didn’t detect someone putting poison into a few hundred truckloads.
I expect brands to have quality control procedures in place.
But the best that they can realistically do, once they've found out about the shenanigans, is to cancel the licensing deal with the Hungarian manufacturer. Which they probably will. Maybe sue them in a Hungarian court, if there's anybody left to sue.
It means this company is incompetent and should not be trusted. It’s one thing to have malware injected into software (pretty bad) and another to have physical explosives put into your product.