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Apple Is Seeing 'Strong Demand' For Replacement iPhone Batteries (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the next-up dept.

In a letter addressed to the U.S. lawmakers, Apple said earlier this month that it was seeing "strong demand" for replacement iPhone batteries. The company added that it may offer rebates for consumers who paid full price for new batteries. From a report: Apple confirmed in December that software to deal with aging batteries in iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE models could slow down performance. The company apologized and lowered the price of battery replacements for affected models from $79 to $29. In the letter released Tuesday, amid nagging allegations that it slowed down phones with older batteries as a way to push people into buying new phones, the company said it was considering issuing rebates to consumers who paid full price for replacement batteries.

48 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. That's not surprising really by the_skywise · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many people would take advantage of a sale to get new laptop batteries at 60% off?
    I've got an iPhone 6 with a replaced battery a little under a year ago (woohoo rebate!) and I FULLY intend to purchase the replacement around the end of the year just to extend the life of my 6 by another 2 years or so.
    It also ups the resale value.

    1. Re:That's not surprising really by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2

      User replaceable batteries or at cost battery replacement of non user replaceable batteries prolongs cell phone life. Which is good for consumers and bad for the manufacturer's profits.

      Same with user upgradeable Ram and storage.

      Of course this is why Apple and Samsung have moved to non user replaceable batteries. And Apple have moved to soldered Ram and SSD on laptops. Of course neither has been exactly open about the reasons for this and the effect it has on total cost of ownership for users.

      Presumably Windows laptop vendors would have moved to soldered everything if they had as much of a market share as Apple have with iOS (100%) and Samsung have with Android.

      The interesting thing is that Samsung isn't as dominant as you'd expect

      https://www.androidauthority.c...

      They used to have 65% of the market

      http://info.localytics.com/blo...

      Now it seems like they're more like one of many vendors than a near monopolist

      https://www.idc.com/promo/smar...

      Hopefully this will make them produce some phones I'll actually want to buy when my LG V20 wears out.

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    2. Re:That's not surprising really by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      Yup, me too. I purchased a refurbished 6S last summer... the battery is fine, but I'm planning to replace it in November/December because it's only $29. Same thing for a 6 Plus I've got laying around (although in that case, it's likely the battery is significantly degraded at this point in time).

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      #DeleteChrome
    3. Re:That's not surprising really by the_skywise · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not just a nefarious conspiracy. Modular components (ram, network cards) require physical connections which are never as good as a soldered connection as well as layout space to replaceable. The whole move towards thinness and lighter phones and laptops was a great driver to the soldered components and to pack as much tech into as small a space as possible.
      I'm sure some of that was also a drive to lock the customer into certain features and specs but this happened with PC laptops long before Apple jumped back into the game. I've gone through my share of gaming laptops and which at least allowed me to expand memory and hard drives. (and more recently WiFi - In THEORY I can change out the GPU but it's ridiculously expensive and a pain to do so and a typical customer probably wouldn't do that.) Can't do that AT ALL with my Surface Pro 4 but I see that as a move towards computers as an appliance. Same with cars these days. It used to be that you could do most of your own repairs on a car - not these days.

    4. Re:That's not surprising really by Solandri · · Score: 2

      Not exactly sure I'd liken this to 60% off a laptop battery. Apple is still making a ton of money off these battery replacements. It's just that the amount they were making has dropped from obscene to huge.

      Laptop batteries are typically 30-50 Watt-hours. The iPhone 6 and earlier use about 1500 mAh batteries at 3.8 V, which is 5.7 Watt-hours. By comparison a Samsung Galaxy S5 battery is nearly twice the size - 2800 mAh (10.78 Wh) but costs just $9. I suppose you could say the extra $20 pays for the labor to do the battery swap, if you believe Apple Store workers make $600 an hour.

    5. Re:That's not surprising really by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2

      I'm not suggesting a conspiracy, nefarious or otherwise.

      Apple have a notoriously non technical and style conscious user base and I suppose a sealed phone is what they want.

      What's irritating is not so much that Apple do it but that other manufacturers see Apple doing it, know that Apple are the 'cool' brand and copy them. Even though they're actually operating in a competitive market and have a more diverse user base, some of whom won't buy their stuff unless it has a removable battery, headphone jack and so on.

      And frankly it's hardly surprising that people on 'news for nerds' complain about not being able to swap out batteries or upgrade laptops.

      Personally I think it's a shame that MXM never really took off on Windows laptops, but I can see the reasons it didn't. At least on Windows PCs you've got a vast choice of vendors and you can get almost any feature set you want - you could even build a luggable machines with expandable graphics in a micro ITX case. That's not really the case with Android though - the most recent phone I could find with a removable battery that I actually want to buy is the LG V20. People like Essential are launching phones with no removable battery and no headphone jack and wonder why it doesn't sell like an iPhone

      https://www.reddit.com/r/Andro...

      Dumbasses. iPhones sell despite their lack of headphone jack, not because of it. Even their user base objects, but they're locked into Apple's ecosystem.

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    6. Re:That's not surprising really by Anubis+IV · · Score: 1

      In a quick price check on Amazon, it looks like iPhone 6 battery replacements run about $20 on average, rather than the $9 for the S5's battery. Regardless of why that's happening, it suggests that users are paying about $10 for the replacement service (as well as for the guarantee that the battery is from a trustworthy source), rather than $20, which changes the math quite a bit. At that point, you're starting to talk about the sorts of margins that are perfectly normal across a variety of industries.

      I agree that Apple regularly has obscene margins on many of their products (e.g. memory and storage pricing), but I don't find this one to be particularly egregious, nor even "huge".

    7. Re:That's not surprising really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Of course this is why Apple and Samsung have moved to non user replaceable batteries.

      You try to lay out a nice case, but this part is nothing but leaping to a speculative conclusion, then treating it as fact. All this rest of your post is the fruit of the tainted logic.

    8. Re:That's not surprising really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > People like Essential are launching phones with no removable battery and no headphone jack and wonder why it doesn't sell like an iPhone.

      The high-end phone market is saturated. Amazon couldn't break into it with its Fire Phone. There's a set of brands people are sticking to. It seems there's room for growth at the mid-tier and low-end, but no one wants to sell cheap phones to Americans. ($30 Android One phones would be great if they could guaranteed to get security patches for a year or two.)

      Batteries and headphone jacks aren't a big deal since people buy USB battery packs for the former and phone cases with integrated 3.5 mm jacks for the latter (albeit, a no-reputation phone like the Essential won't have the same accessory support). The big one is that Apple is blocking third party repair shops from repairing their products. The average person may not be able to mess with soldering, but a repair shop sure as hell can. They could probably replace a phone battery for $30, given that Apple only pays about $5 for its phone batteries.

  2. $29 for battery replacement is a good deal by prasadsurve · · Score: 2, Insightful

    no wonder there is strong demand for it.

    1. Re:$29 for battery replacement is a good deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What if there was a way to make this easier to do? A 'replaceable' battery, if you will?

    2. Re:$29 for battery replacement is a good deal by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What if there was a way to make this easier to do? A 'replaceable' battery, if you will?

      Standard Slashdot trope - but the market has spoken. IF there was a STRONG demand for quick replaceable batteries ala early Blackberries THEN we would see them in the market. And see them successful. Certainly there are (a couple dozen) people who find this useful but not enough to push manufactures to offer it routinely. It's pretty obvious that it CAN be done.

      I remember the extra BB batteries. With the expensive and non standard charger. Which was always at home when I really needed it. Or the tiny little battery was in my backpack when I didn't have it with me. Or something.

      Now you see the 'Zombie with the USB cord' stomping around airports and pretty much every public space with a wall power outlet. We've gone to placing generic USB chargers on the wall at each bay in the ER because patients kept trying to plug their chargers in while waiting. Which drove the biomed staff bezerk because you're not supposed to plug anything in that hasn't been blessed by Biomed (basically checking for leakage current so patients and staff don't get electrocuted - not such a bad thing to do).

      So we have the blessed chargers there for people to use. They're happy (until they get the bill) and Biomed is happy and nobody gets fried.

      That pointless story is just to illustrate that the ubiquity of the USB standard and a tiny little cable has pretty much negated the need for the pop in battery.

      Progress charges on.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    3. Re:$29 for battery replacement is a good deal by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      basically checking for leakage current so patients and staff don't get electrocuted - not such a bad thing to do

      I don't know, sounds like an untapped profit source to me. Just make sure there is plenty of legal verbiage around the ports to prevent liability in a lawsuit.

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    4. Re:$29 for battery replacement is a good deal by Falos · · Score: 1

      > market products are built according to demand
      Market products are built according to maximum profit.

    5. Re:$29 for battery replacement is a good deal by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      Something's gone radically wrong. It used to be that companies made stuff that consumers wanted. Now they add a bunch of features consumers don't care about, remove the ones they do and rely on the fact that anyone who points out the idiocy of this will be told 'THE MARKET HAS SPOKEN'.

      Yeah, enjoy your $800 device that's designed to fail in a year and a half so you need to buy another one.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    6. Re:$29 for battery replacement is a good deal by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      The 'THE MARKET HAS SPOKEN' crowd aren't exactly wrong, though. The market has spoken and they're saying that's what they want to sell, regardless of what the other half of the market wants to buy.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    7. Re:$29 for battery replacement is a good deal by Dixie_Flatline · · Score: 2

      You understand that there's a tradeoff here, right?

      Nobody—no market—has said, "all things being equal, I prefer that my battery is non-replaceable". What the market HAS said is, "all things are NOT equal, and non-replaceable batteries are lighter, make for less obtrusive phones, and are sufficiently good that I don't really care about the replaceability".

      We know this is the case because there ARE phones out there that still have user replaceable batteries, and people don't flock to those. That's not where the priority is.

      Your false equivalence is not persuasive.

  3. Because they got caught. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Apple doesn't do things out of the goodness of their heart. Apple execs realized they had been caught and it would have serious repercussions in the EU, so they decided to simply reduce their profit margin. They are still making a killing on replacing batteries but now they look charitable despite being anything but.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:Because they got caught. by Freischutz · · Score: 1

      Apple doesn't do things out of the goodness of their heart.

      Can you name a corporation that does?

    2. Re:Because they got caught. by ckatko · · Score: 1

      I think it's amazing how Apple can profit even when they fuck up and have essentially a recall.

      That's like Honda killing people with faulty airbags, and charging you the bill to give you airbags that actually deploy.

      Whoever runs their PR "spin" deserves a Nobel Prize.

  4. Re: America has a "strong demand" for a new POTUS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    What does this have to do with Trump?

  5. What about iPad users? by omfglearntoplay · · Score: 1

    I've got more than one iPad at my house... I don't want to pay full price for new batteries to speed them up.

    1. Re:What about iPad users? by Dixie_Flatline · · Score: 1

      It's unlikely that your iPad has this problem just because the batteries are so huge in relationship to the CPU. I've never heard of anyone having the random shutdown problem with their iPad (or any other tablet, for that matter). It's bound to happen eventually, I suppose, but my iPad 3 never had that problem and it was so slow in its end days that I could barely stand to use it.

  6. What about? by Jharish · · Score: 1

    So they're refunding people who paid full price but what about the people who actually BOUGHT a whole new phone? Those people should be getting something too. I upgraded because the phone slowed down and I figured it was just that the apps were getting too big and bloated for the old processor so I upgraded. I want a refund. too!

    1. Re:What about? by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      This. The only reason my wife upgraded from her 6S Plus and gave up her headphone jack was that the phone was slowing down. She now has no headphone jack and the knowledge that a much cheaper battery upgrade would have let her keep using her favorite headphones.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    2. Re:What about? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      So they're refunding people who paid full price but what about the people who actually BOUGHT a whole new phone? Those people should be getting something too.

      You got a new phone. Enjoy

  7. DON'T! YOU! SAY! by grungeman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Only Captain Obvious could have seen this coming.

    --

    Signature deleted by lameness filter.
  8. If only.. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2

    If only all wireless phones had user-replaceable batteries.. nah, that's just crazy talk!

  9. captain obvious reporting by FudRucker · · Score: 1

    it was stupid to make cellphone batteries irreplaceable or difficult to replace anyway, its not just replacing the phone, you also have to transfer your phone account and all the data you keep on the phone, then configure it to the way you like it,
    just the other day the idea came to me and i searched for a smartphone with just the minimum of features that ran on 3 or 4 AAA batteries, sure it would be more bulky than your modern smartphones but the replacing the battery problem wont be an issue anymore,.

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
    1. Re:captain obvious reporting by ziggystarsky · · Score: 1

      Just buy a phone with a replaceable battery. Done! There are many. I have a Moto G4 Play, which has replaceable battery. No need to bother with AAA batteries – that's really a stupid idea.

    2. Re:captain obvious reporting by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      As ziggystarsky said above, a phone that runs on AAA batteries is a stupid idea...

      What you want is a phone that runs on CR2032 coin cells!

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    3. Re:captain obvious reporting by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      So switch back to your Alcatel One Touch Easy.
      If you forgot to charge it last week you could run it on 3 AAA's. It was an outrage you could only use an Alcatel rechargeable battery though, it wouldn't charge regular AAA's.

  10. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  11. Many stories on Slashdot of Apple bad management. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1

    Apple is poorly managed, in my opinion.

  12. Re:$29 for ColdWetDog brain transplant is a steal by omfglearntoplay · · Score: 1

    Good info... I'm locked into iPhones due to the job (they pay for it so...). But when recommending devices to others, I often go with Androids. Knowing Samsung is going greedy with making things more breakable is an important consideration.

  13. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  14. Re:There is demand but no supply by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    Insightly funny, even though it's the sad truth.

    How can we expect Apple to create good computers when all the CEO uses is a damn tablet.

    Signed,
    Apple user.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  15. Re:Many stories on Slashdot of Apple bad managemen by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

    They've turned being caught red handed defrauding their loyal customers into extra profit. It's quite impressive.

    I hoping they blame a future phone fire on the software drawing too much power from a degraded battery that their original slow-down code would have avoided. When in actual fact it was cheaper inferior quality batteries they sourced to keep up with demand and increase profit margin.

  16. Re:Repricing a $9 battery replacement from $79 to by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

    Don't worry, after they run out of their current stock of batteries, they'll replace them with $5 ones.

  17. Re:$29 for ColdWetDog brain transplant is a steal by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

    The V20 is a generation out of date but you can get 'em cheap now. Removable battery and dual SIM too, which is handy if you keep commuting back and forth between countries.

    https://www.amazon.com/LG-Factory-Uncloked-5-7-Inch-Warranty/dp/B01M4MY4RY

    And realistically how many people actually need a Snapdragon 835 over an 820?

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  18. Isolated incident by ilsaloving · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The only reason they're even doing this is cause their image got a black eye.

    I tried to get a couple of mac minis upgraded, replacing the HDD drive with a 256GB SSD. I was quoted at $1000 just for the drive . This doesn't even include the labour for taking the thing apart!

    If I were to purchase a brand new Mac Mini, an upgrade to SSD is still $240. Still more expensive than just buying an SSD from the store, but that's 1/4 of the price I was quoted for the repair.

    Apple sure loves their shenanigans.

    1. Re:Isolated incident by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

      That's Canadian $, just to be clear.

    2. Re:Isolated incident by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      I tried to get a couple of mac minis upgraded, replacing the HDD drive with a 256GB SSD. I was quoted at $1000 just for the drive . This doesn't even include the labour for taking the thing apart!

      If I were to purchase a brand new Mac Mini, an upgrade to SSD is still $240.

      You can get a complete Intel NUC including SSD for the price of Apple's SSD, why keep abusing yourself? And AMD 2700U based minis will land any time now.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  19. And theyâ(TM)re bumbling the appointments by pauljlucas · · Score: 1
    I made my appointment to get my iPhoneâ(TM)s battery replaced via Appleâ(TM)s web site. The form specifically asks the purpose of the appointment and iPhone battery replacement is one of the choices. After selecting that, making the appointment, and showing up at the appointed time, Iâ(TM)m told that they donâ(TM)t actually have a battery in stock due to âoehigh demand.â

    Well then why the hell did their web form allow me to make an appointment for a suggested date and time knowing Iâ(TM)d want a battery replaced if there were no batteries in stock? Youâ(TM)d think their inventory system could be coupled with their Genius Bar appointment system, but apparently not.

    --
    If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
  20. Re:Batteries backordered by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    Went to Apple Store and the replacement batteries are so popular that they're backordered by two weeks. Have to go in again once mine arrives.

    There being a limited supply of Apple diehards, this is clearly bad news for Apple's next quarter.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  21. Drop price to zero, Apple... by Hallux-F-Sinister · · Score: 1

    And give cash to users like me who bought your âoethey just workâ phones, or at least a decent iTunes or Apple Store credit for the trouble of having to drag myself to your store, (or be without my phone when I send it in, wait for you to swap the battery, (or pretend to,) then ship it back, and assuming all goes to plan, I have WHAT I ALREADY PAID FOR.

    Just about ready to eBay all my Apple shit and buy something from a company NOT constantly trying to rip me off.

    --
    Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
  22. About three weeks by movdqa · · Score: 1

    I put in an order a week ago and the indications are two to three weeks for the battery to get to the store. So, yes, demand is very heavy. When the program started out, the Genius Bar was booked out for a week so I guess the earlybird did get the worm. They are basically rationing out the battery replacements now. This is for my previous phone, my current phone is fine.

  23. Re: Um, ain't this kinda like ... by Brockmire · · Score: 1

    What? No, it's the complete opposite. Apple users demand something with their money and don't get it. Microsoft users decline it and get it anyway, for free, often without waiting. Were you sick that day in school or something? I have no fucking clue how you think this is similar. This isn't a boastful thing to say for Apple, it's shining a fucking light on how defective the batteries and/or design is.