Tim Cook to Investors: People Bought Fewer New iPhones Because They Repaired Their Old Ones (vice.com)

On Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook issued a dire warning to his investors. Apple, the world's first trillion dollar company, lowered its revenue forecast for the first time since 2002, thanks primarily to China, he said. But there was at least one more issue at play.

Motherboard: The lengthy letter cites, specifically, that people are buying fewer iPhones because they are repairing their old ones. Apple has long fought efforts that would make iPhones easier to repair: It has lobbied against right to repair efforts in several states, doesn't sell iPhone replacement parts, sued an independent repair professional in Norway, worked with Amazon to get iPhone and MacBook refurbishers kicked off Amazon Marketplace, and has deals with electronics recyclers that require them to shred iPhones and MacBooks (as opposed to allowing them to be refurbished.) The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, has seized iPhone replacement parts from prominent right to repair activists in the United States.

[...] Apple has never clearly articulated why it doesn't want people to fix their own iPhones or to have independent experts repair them. It has previously said that iPhones are "too complex" for users to repair them, even though replacing a battery is pretty easy and is done by average users all the time. But the fact that repair hurts Apple's bottom line came out in Cook's official communication with shareholders, who he is legally obligated to tell the truth to.

Comments

Re: If this hurts Apple's bottom line, it should.

[Anonymous Coward]

You do NOT need a headphone jack PERIOD. Why is that so hard for you to grasp?

It's not up to you to decide what I need. Why is that so hard for you to grasp?

Apple is NOT the world's first $1T company

[schwit1]

Saudi Aramco was valued over $1T years ago.

Re:Apple is NOT the world's first $1T company

[Zocalo]

Kind of related, but there are currently no $1T companies after the stock market tumbles of the last year or so. According to the chart in this article on Apple's update, all the FAANG companies are now firmly below $0.8T, and Apple now has the US' fourth largest market cap, behind (in order) Microsoft, Amazon and Google, having fallen somewhat more sharply than the rest.

history repeating

[kiviQr]

Do I need to remind you that Apple failed looong time ago because they started pushing product that no one wanted (precustomized, never upgradable product)? Sounds familiar?

Apple wants you to buy new devices.

[TomBauserman]

Higher profit margin. The school that I work at has 200+ perfectly good ipads that just won't update past 10.3.3. They aren't that old and there's nothing wrong with them. Built in obsolescence. Now the apps we use won't work because they do a version check for 11+ So fuck apple, we're getting Android tablets, next round.

Re:Apple wants you to buy new devices.

[omnichad]

I hate to tell you, but Android is mostly worse in this regard. Apple does a lot of things wrong, but long-term OS upgrades is generally better than Android.

The 5-year old 2nd-gen iPad mini still supports iOS 12. iPhone support for iOS 12 goes back to 2014 devices. I had an Google Nexus 6 that went out of support 1.5 years after I bought it - no no updates. And that was an actual Google co-branded phone. The full size iPad is a weird exception to this.

All mobile devices are still given way too short of a supported lifespan. With Android there's no predicting when support will end either.

Re: If this hurts Apple's bottom line, it should.

[swillden]

hey have a 3.5mm (god I hate calling it that... it is 1/8"...)

It isn't. The diameter of the plug is 3.5 mm. 1/8" would be 3.175 mm, 10% smaller than 3.5 mm.