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Samsung Halts Galaxy Note 7 Production Temporarily (wsj.com)
Samsung is halting production of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone after the replacement units -- the second batch of Note 7 produced -- by Samsung also seemed to be riddled with a similar issue, with nearly half a dozen of explosion and burning issues in the past week alone. Yonhap News Agency, and the WSJ are both reporting that the halt was done in cooperation with safety regulators from South Korea, China and the United States. From a WSJ report: Samsung's move comes after a spate of fresh reports of problems with replacement phones that have been distributed to consumers around the world. While Samsung hasn't confirmed the reports, it said in a statement Friday in response to one report that it would "move quickly to investigate the reported case to determine the cause and will share findings as soon as possible."
I think the quest for ever thinner phones and ever thinner batteries is to blame.
I want thicker phones with longer life.
I also think a battery-only recall would have been cheaper, so there is a lot to be said for removable batteries too.
I want user-replaceable batteries
I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I do know what I want.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
It can't be over priced if the market is bearing that price. The value of any product is exactly what the public is willing to pay for it.
The thing is the iPhone is not something essential and there are thousands of alternatives out there.
That's a dangerous way to think.
Products ARE worth what people are willing to pay for them. That is a cold stone fact. It's not a "dangerous way to think" because it's simply the truth. You fail to acknowledge that truth at your peril. It's like saying gravity is a dangerous way to think. That argument makes no sense because it implies that a law of nature is somehow a point of view. It isn't. Products are worth what the market will bear is in economics as close to a fundamental law of nature as you will find. It's right up there with supply and demand effects on price.
It is that kind of thinking that leads to 500% increases in the cost of life saving drugs just for the heck of it
Which is why most sane countries regulate the price of drugs to avoid that exact circumstance because health care is needed by everyone. And even in the crazy US we regulate a lot of markets (electricity, telephone, water, etc) where there is a risk of a utility abusing its monopoly on a product. The value of a product is what people are willing to pay for it. When the consequences of not paying for it are possible death, the value of that product can be very high if there is no alternative source for it.
So no, the value of something isn't what the market will bear, otherwise you'd be paying millions for clean air.
You are conflating some very different things. First off we ARE paying millions (billions really) for clean air as a society. The price of it is rolled into the cost of the products you buy. Those environmental regulations aren't free. (and that's not a bad thing either) Second, we are perfectly capable of regulating monopolies to keep them from getting out of hand. We do this all the time. Third, the value of something in economic terms absolutely IS what people are willing to pay for it. Some things are public goods and we have to be careful about ensuring they remain so but the value of fresh water or breathable air is tremendously high - we've just organized our legal system to ensure they are available to all.