Companies in Apple's Repair Program Say They Can't Compete With Tech Giant (theguardian.com) 31
Companies in Apple's third-party repair program say delays in the process and high pricing for parts make it almost impossible to compete with the juggernaut. From a report: In 2021 Apple, under pressure from a Productivity Commission review on the "right to repair," launched its independent repair provider program in Australia. It was trumpeted as a way for small companies to compete with Apple to repair their products -- such as the iPhone -- using Apple tools and spare parts. At the time, repairers said they felt the move was a token gesture designed to head off any potential right-to-repair legislation that would have been recommended by the Productivity Commission review. Two years later, some say their fears have been realised. A number of repairers Guardian Australia has spoken to in Australia and the US suggest Apple's slow response times and the high cost for replacement parts makes it almost impossible for them to be viable competitors. The repairers requested anonymity to speak about the program, fearing that reprisals from the California-based tech giant might prevent them from remaining in the program.
Apple has indicated it takes an average of eight weeks for repairers to be admitted to the program, but repairers Guardian Australia has spoken to said the wait time can be up to six months -- and that it feels like the applications sit in a black hole, without any point of contact within Apple to provide an update on their status. Once repairers are admitted to the program, they receive training from Apple, as well as access to Apple parts, tools, repair manuals and diagnostic software for the company's iPhones and Macs. But they say the price of the parts, as well as the process to get a discounted rate for replacement parts, make it difficult for repairers to compete with Apple's own repair program. One repairer, who says his business repairs between 30 and 40 Apple products every week, said the average repair takes between an hour to an hour and a half. If it charge the rate Apple charges customers for repairs, then its maximum margin is about $60.
Apple has indicated it takes an average of eight weeks for repairers to be admitted to the program, but repairers Guardian Australia has spoken to said the wait time can be up to six months -- and that it feels like the applications sit in a black hole, without any point of contact within Apple to provide an update on their status. Once repairers are admitted to the program, they receive training from Apple, as well as access to Apple parts, tools, repair manuals and diagnostic software for the company's iPhones and Macs. But they say the price of the parts, as well as the process to get a discounted rate for replacement parts, make it difficult for repairers to compete with Apple's own repair program. One repairer, who says his business repairs between 30 and 40 Apple products every week, said the average repair takes between an hour to an hour and a half. If it charge the rate Apple charges customers for repairs, then its maximum margin is about $60.
New business (Score:3)
Maybe they can just shift over to repairing Android devices, where they can better compete for customers.
Yeah, this shit again (Score:5, Insightful)
As Louis Rossman points out this par for the course for Apple. Most of the time Apple will tell you your device is not repairable when it is. Right to repair needs to be passed globally and now. I'm an electronics technician and with a proper schematic (which used to be included with electronic devices) and a device that tears down properly (screws, not glue!) I can fix anything. Apple keeps putting up artificial barriers in their devices and services to thwart third party repair. Think different people.
Re: Yeah, this shit again (Score:2)
But people like ArchieBunker buy apple for exactly this reason. Just like with sideloading, he believes that if even one ifan can circumvent planned obsolescence, then all ifans will be less safe, and if you don't want planned obsolescence then you shouldn't buy apple.
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nonsense. If this was an issue that people cared about, they would be buying other types of phones, the types that are fixable. The point of Apple is to sell you the new version of the phone once a year or whatever (I am an Android user).
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In fairness, Apple is primarily screws-not-glue in their builds; at least when it comes to iPhones and Macbooks ( ignoring the batteries alas! ), certainly compared to a lot of Androids the glue factor isn't a big thing any more, thank goodness.
Regarding topic of article, no big surprise about Apple doing this, right from the outset it was fairly obvious it was a bit of lip service and you should have expected Apple to do their absolute utmost fo ensure it was infeasible to be part of their program and mak
Maximum margin... (Score:1)
... somehow that doesn't sound right... "If it charge the rate Apple charges customers for repairs, then its maximum margin is about $60."
That's after your deducting the cost of the parts, training, labor, rent, etc. At 30 devices / week comes out to a profit of $1,800 x 52 = $93,600. Plus you have other business - Android and other electronics (VCRs, toasters, etc.) that you're rebuilding.
Agreed, a man, plan, and a soldering iron it's quite what it was 30-40 years ago.
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Of course, if they weren't sandbagged by Apple's vastly inflated parts charges, they could make a lot more while charging a lot less and do a higher volume as well.
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Not profit, just the cost of insurance. Then you need to pay the utilities, rent, taxes and other business repairs. These costs ere not listed, you just added them in to make it sound profitable.
Nickels and Dimes, death by a thousand cuts (Score:1)
They can compete in the USA (Score:3)
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They most likely used a 3rd party replacement screen, not an Apple part.
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No, the third party stuff last longer and is stronger than the intentionally weak crap Apple uses.
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A few months ago I used a chain repair shop called uBreakiFix to replace the screen in my nephew's 3 year old iPhone. They got it done the same day I gave it to them. I'm pretty sure Apple would have charged more
You used a giant chain of repair shops that covers close to 1000 stores across America owned by a large insurance company with $8.5billion in revenue. Your example is completely irrelevant to 99% of repair shops out there which aren't some large corporation with whole logistics departments and lawyers behind them helping them navigate Apple.
This isn't about Australia vs USA. Your anecdote is completely off-topic.
Fighting Right to Repair is Foolish (Score:3)
Apple no doubt wants to make as much revenue from new products as possible, but at the same time their replacement model and forcing items to become obsolete so fast is fundamentally bad for the environment no matter how they want to paint it. They are increasing their revenue from services. This will continue. The next big thing would be to space out releases between models and post to become more of a service oriented model. While their revenue might slide, they could easily cut their expenses by slowing down certain production costs tied to strict deadlines.
Let's be perfectly honest with ourselves. When was the last killer feature that you had on a phone? There is no show stopper that I can remember for quite a while. My wife has the latest model and mine is over 5 years old and I still prefer my own phone to hers. Better camera which is great, but past that, nothing of value has been added.
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Apple no doubt wants to make as much revenue from new products as possible, but at the same time their replacement model and forcing items to become obsolete so fast is fundamentally bad for the environment no matter how they want to paint it. They are increasing their revenue from services. This will continue. The next big thing would be to space out releases between models and post to become more of a service oriented model. While their revenue might slide, they could easily cut their expenses by slowing down certain production costs tied to strict deadlines.
Let's be perfectly honest with ourselves. When was the last killer feature that you had on a phone? There is no show stopper that I can remember for quite a while. My wife has the latest model and mine is over 5 years old and I still prefer my own phone to hers. Better camera which is great, but past that, nothing of value has been added.
... because making the shittiest devices possible and making your money off of the repairs is really going to get people to come back and buy more of your product. Do you have any data backing up this insinuation of yours that Apple is making bumper profits off of one of the highest device failure rate in tech industry history which on top of that is part of some diabolical plan to destroy the biosphere of the planet? Also, as regards your claim that Apple is forcing their poor suffering 'Slaves in the spic
Apple does provide long term support (Score:2)
It is not just iDevices which get decent support either. Mac Pro 2013 also still receives security updates in 2023, and will likely continue to
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they're doing better with their software, but Apple has always maintained a strict policy with their hardware:
- 3 years = 0ld (limited parts availability, you should buy a new one)
- 5 years = "Vintage" (many parts now unavailable)
- 7 years = "Obsolete" (NO parts available)
If you live in Cali of course it's different because laws. Apple shunts their parts to Cali sometimes even before 3 years just to make sure they can meet the laws there. I remember several instances, such as back with the white imac G5's
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Let's be perfectly honest with ourselves. When was the last killer feature that you had on a phone? There is no show stopper that I can remember for quite a while.
Oh, how about the iPhone 14's Satellite-Based Emergency Communications? Under the right circumstances, that could be a pretty frickin' great feature!
I believe that was announced about 9 months ago, and went Live only about 6 months ago.
Repairs are not a major profit center for Apple (Score:3)
I very much doubt that Apple makes much money on repairs. (Don't get me wrong: I'm sure they don't lose money on them, either.) A good benchmark is that they make, overall, a 30% profit margin, every quarter, like clockwork. Yes, some things are higher (cough app store) and some are lower (cough mac pro), but it's a good bet that repairs are right in that 30% margin area.
Apple devices are, for better or worse, optimized to be high-performance, light, and reliable, with repairability an afterthought compared to those attributes. Replacing an iPhone battery —properly, with a low risk of damaging the phone —requires expensive tools and training, and then the parts are expensive too. There's no evidence to my eye that Apple is charging unreasonable rates for replacement parts or tooling; I look at this program and say "well it doesn't make sense for me, the parts aren't cheaper enough than having Apple do the repair" but the parts are clearly cheaper than having Apple do the repair.
So! If you're doing repairs on Apple devices, you probably can't simply do the same thing they do, except cheaper. That was a silly idea from the start.
Where you _can_ compete is in location -- maybe the closest Apple store is three hours away. Or you could beat them on turnaround time (you're doing this in-house, Apple is usually sending the machine out to a repair center), and customer service. You can offer things like emergency service and house calls. You can charge for these things. Some people will pay a large premium to have a friendly repair tech come to their house and fix their laptop or phone!
The right-to-repair folk have won this fight. Apple has committed to publishing repair guides (they're just there, on the web, today) and selling replacement parts and tooling. They even rent tooling if you need that. But saying that Apple needs to sell parts at cost, or at a loss(!), is silly.
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They haven't really won.
Apple's repair program contract mandates that NO parts other tha apple parts are even allowed in the business that applies to their program. Also no blueprints. They just sell the boards and maybe a few assemblies at higher-than-necessary cost and threaten to sue if they find that stuff on the site. Worse than that, they demand access to ALL customer data the shop has, so even if they didn't get a repair done, they just got a quote or they bought a peripheral, guess who gets to see t
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For example: Apple's repair program sells a torque wrench, adjustable between 2.5 and 25 Nm. Looks like it has a 1/4" drive. It's $157.52.
Looking on McMaster-Carr, similar wrenches (they don't have any that have that exact range) list in the $160-$180 range.
Apple's just selling a quality torque wrench at regular price for a quality torque wrench.
Re: Repairs are not a major profit center for Appl (Score:2)
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For example: Apple's repair program sells a torque wrench, adjustable between 2.5 and 25 Nm. Looks like it has a 1/4" drive. It's $157.52.
Looking on McMaster-Carr, similar wrenches (they don't have any that have that exact range) list in the $160-$180 range.
Apple's just selling a quality torque wrench at regular price for a quality torque wrench.
And fast forward to actual reality and you don't need a torque wrench to repair an Apple product. At least until they release the Apple car. Apple has a spec for consistency, that doesn't mean you can't do something cheaper with different tools.
Apple's device for opening iPhone screens also costs thousands of dollars. You can also do it with a $10 hot air gun and a guitarpick. Are you running a risk of something going wrong? Yes, but there's no argument that it can be done more cheaply.
Re: Repairs are not a major profit center for Appl (Score:2)
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So! If you're doing repairs on Apple devices, you probably can't simply do the same thing they do, except cheaper. That was a silly idea from the start.
Actually you can. Maybe not consistently but you definitely can. The process Apple use for example to open the iPhone involves thousands of dollars worth of dedicated gear, you can also do it with a $10 harbor freight hot air gun and some guitar picks. Apple may do it with more consistency but that comes at a price.
stop sales of Apple in Australia (Score:2)
Once Cook realizes that ppl are sick and tired of being screwed over
Yes, I recently switched to apple, but apple is only marginally better than google, because they have a better product and give longer security support.
Right to repair, not right to profit (Score:1)
Surely reliable, effective, inexpensive