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By volume, the chips on the open market aren’t stolen and most aren’t counterfeit. Most are legitimate and a fair amount of the suspiciously cheap parts are bin

By volume, the chips on the open market aren’t stolen and most aren’t counterfeit. Most are legitimate and a fair amount of the suspiciously cheap parts are binned or older revisions. The scale of the chip marketplace is more akin to sum of the agricultural output of California’s Central Valley - not your weekend farmers market. No one is messing around with stolen parts in these kind of quantities. The reason companies are kicking and screaming about right to repair is because reverse logistics (how you deal broken/returned goods) is already a huge cost center and the legislation as proposed would make it more so. No one is making massive profit off repair parts - they’re offsetting massive losses.

Nextgrid 5y ago
I don't mean chips per-se, I mean complete assemblies like iPhone displays. As far as I know, there's no "legitimate" source for those, it's all either outright stolen, counterfeit or bad/rejected parts. > because reverse logistics (how you deal broken/returned goods) is already a huge cost center and the legislation as proposed would make it more so How would right to repair affect that? And if it wasn't profit-motivated how do you explain the extreme efforts some manufacturers do to prevent people from repairing their own devices (like iPhone cameras being associated with the logic board and not being usable in any other phone of the same model)?
- userbinator 5y ago
  They could also be recycled from units with other damaged parts, which is also "legitimate", whatever that means (although I'm sure Apple et.al. don't want that.) In much the same way that salvage yards are a source of car parts, yet companies like Tesla are trying to stop that.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Not sure if it's the case for Apple, but for other phones, there's definitely plenty of parts recycling happening. I replaced my broken Galaxy S4 screen when in Shenzhen in 2015, and bought a replacement screen for Galaxy S3 for my wife (to have a spare I could use to perform the repair myself back home). My repair was dirt-cheap - I paid something like $10 to get a whole new screen assembly and a new back camera (I broke mine), the whole repair done in front of me in under 5 minutes. The extra screen for my wife was much more expensive - ~$50, IIRC. The difference is, with my phone, they kept the broken parts. They presumably replaced the broken glass in it at their own pace, and put it back on the market. I also saw plenty of work being done on phone components, as well as people unloading and sorting through big bags of broken phones. There's lots of e-waste recycling going on there.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > I mean complete assemblies like iPhone displays. As far as I know, there's no "legitimate" source for those So how are legitimate high street shops in the west doing it? You can’t convince me every town in the UK has a criminal operation working in the open doing screen replacements?
  - someguydave 5y ago
    apple authorized stores and retailers can buy modules or send them to apple
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      They clearly aren't sending them to Apple, because they do it while you wait. And they don't claim to be authorised in any way. I would have thought if they were they'd make a big deal of that.
  - peteretep 5y ago
    https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?SearchText=iphone+replacement+screen https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?SearchText=iphone+repla... the only way you'd get the plod even vaguely interested would be if these arrived in boxes that claimed they were genuine parts, and even then...
- dingusthemingus 5y ago
  My buddy buys broken Iphones/screens and sells them to China where all the underlying parts are stripped and used for repairing Iphones. This is legitamite not shady at all. Ships hundreds at a time. A lof of the parts used for repair in China are coming from US/EU broken phones.
- walrus01 5y ago
  > it's all either outright stolen, counterfeit or bad/rejected parts The other very common possibility is that it's what's called a "ghost shift" where the factory runs a whole production run on a possibly overnight work shift, creates a batch of product for sale to third parties, and then resumes their legit-for-transfer-to-apple production run the next morning. Happens with all sorts of electronics manufacturing in mainland china. This does not necessarily mean that the ghost shift products go through absolutely the same level of QC that the main production run gets, but I wouldn't call them counterfeit.
  - ThrustVectoring 5y ago
    "ghost shift" production with the trademarks is counterfeit, but isn't without the trademarks. Regardless of marking it's still likely unauthorized use of intellectual property.
    - walrus01 5y ago
      I mentally make a distinction between "counterfeit" products which are actually authentic and good quality, unlikely to hurt the consumer, but arguably cause some harm to apple's IP, and "counterfeit" products which are actually poor quality clones made by inferior production lines. It's unfortunate that the same term is used for both. Presumably a high volume and skilled third party repair shop and its purchasing people will be a crucial role in buying and distinguishing between the two types of hardware.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
        The term counterfeit is here being used by some people to mean 'genuine parts sold off-license', which is much more like a bootleg copy[1]. That is, it's the same item sold off-license. To some extent words mean what people who use them intend to mean, but in my opinion we shouldn't be calling parts from the same production line counterfeit, because the word implies forgery.[2] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleg_recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleg_recording 2. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/counterfeit https://www.dictionary.com/browse/counterfeit Edit: changed a word for clarity.
spamizbad 5y ago
Right to repair would actually ease this burden: Apple manufactures very few components on its devices. Apple prevents its suppliers from selling to third parties (which wouldn’t necessarily be a repair shop but someone like digikey or mouser) of some pretty basic components that do not contain any real secret sauce (we are talking about things like voltage regulators here) The auto industry has widespread part available for decades with no ill effects.
- creato 5y ago
  > The auto industry has widespread part available for decades with no ill effects. That depends on who you ask. Car dealerships probably think they have suffered great ill effects from the existence of independent repair shops.
  - asddubs 5y ago
    I suspect trying to garner sympathy from people for dealerships is going to be a hard sell
    - creato 5y ago
      I agree. And I'm comparing car dealerships to Apple :)
smolder 5y ago
It's really unforunate, since repair is a good value in terms of reducing externalities like e-waste and natural resource use, not to mention a potential way to develop electronics skills in our workforce with low-barrier-to-entry jobs.

Nextgrid 5y ago

I don't mean chips per-se, I mean complete assemblies like iPhone displays. As far as I know, there's no "legitimate" source for those, it's all either outright stolen, counterfeit or bad/rejected parts. > because reverse logistics (how you deal broken/returned goods) is already a huge cost center and the legislation as proposed would make it more so How would right to repair affect that? And if it wasn't profit-motivated how do you explain the extreme efforts some manufacturers do to prevent people from repairing their own devices (like iPhone cameras being associated with the logic board and not being usable in any other phone of the same model)?

userbinator 5y ago
They could also be recycled from units with other damaged parts, which is also "legitimate", whatever that means (although I'm sure Apple et.al. don't want that.) In much the same way that salvage yards are a source of car parts, yet companies like Tesla are trying to stop that.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Not sure if it's the case for Apple, but for other phones, there's definitely plenty of parts recycling happening. I replaced my broken Galaxy S4 screen when in Shenzhen in 2015, and bought a replacement screen for Galaxy S3 for my wife (to have a spare I could use to perform the repair myself back home). My repair was dirt-cheap - I paid something like $10 to get a whole new screen assembly and a new back camera (I broke mine), the whole repair done in front of me in under 5 minutes. The extra screen for my wife was much more expensive - ~$50, IIRC. The difference is, with my phone, they kept the broken parts. They presumably replaced the broken glass in it at their own pace, and put it back on the market. I also saw plenty of work being done on phone components, as well as people unloading and sorting through big bags of broken phones. There's lots of e-waste recycling going on there.
chrisseaton 5y ago
> I mean complete assemblies like iPhone displays. As far as I know, there's no "legitimate" source for those So how are legitimate high street shops in the west doing it? You can’t convince me every town in the UK has a criminal operation working in the open doing screen replacements?
- someguydave 5y ago
  apple authorized stores and retailers can buy modules or send them to apple
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    They clearly aren't sending them to Apple, because they do it while you wait. And they don't claim to be authorised in any way. I would have thought if they were they'd make a big deal of that.
- peteretep 5y ago
  https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?SearchText=iphone+replacement+screen https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?SearchText=iphone+repla... the only way you'd get the plod even vaguely interested would be if these arrived in boxes that claimed they were genuine parts, and even then...
dingusthemingus 5y ago
My buddy buys broken Iphones/screens and sells them to China where all the underlying parts are stripped and used for repairing Iphones. This is legitamite not shady at all. Ships hundreds at a time. A lof of the parts used for repair in China are coming from US/EU broken phones.
walrus01 5y ago
> it's all either outright stolen, counterfeit or bad/rejected parts The other very common possibility is that it's what's called a "ghost shift" where the factory runs a whole production run on a possibly overnight work shift, creates a batch of product for sale to third parties, and then resumes their legit-for-transfer-to-apple production run the next morning. Happens with all sorts of electronics manufacturing in mainland china. This does not necessarily mean that the ghost shift products go through absolutely the same level of QC that the main production run gets, but I wouldn't call them counterfeit.
- ThrustVectoring 5y ago
  "ghost shift" production with the trademarks is counterfeit, but isn't without the trademarks. Regardless of marking it's still likely unauthorized use of intellectual property.
  - walrus01 5y ago
    I mentally make a distinction between "counterfeit" products which are actually authentic and good quality, unlikely to hurt the consumer, but arguably cause some harm to apple's IP, and "counterfeit" products which are actually poor quality clones made by inferior production lines. It's unfortunate that the same term is used for both. Presumably a high volume and skilled third party repair shop and its purchasing people will be a crucial role in buying and distinguishing between the two types of hardware.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
      The term counterfeit is here being used by some people to mean 'genuine parts sold off-license', which is much more like a bootleg copy[1]. That is, it's the same item sold off-license. To some extent words mean what people who use them intend to mean, but in my opinion we shouldn't be calling parts from the same production line counterfeit, because the word implies forgery.[2] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleg_recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleg_recording 2. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/counterfeit https://www.dictionary.com/browse/counterfeit Edit: changed a word for clarity.

spamizbad 5y ago

Right to repair would actually ease this burden: Apple manufactures very few components on its devices. Apple prevents its suppliers from selling to third parties (which wouldn’t necessarily be a repair shop but someone like digikey or mouser) of some pretty basic components that do not contain any real secret sauce (we are talking about things like voltage regulators here) The auto industry has widespread part available for decades with no ill effects.

creato 5y ago
> The auto industry has widespread part available for decades with no ill effects. That depends on who you ask. Car dealerships probably think they have suffered great ill effects from the existence of independent repair shops.
- asddubs 5y ago
  I suspect trying to garner sympathy from people for dealerships is going to be a hard sell
  - creato 5y ago
    I agree. And I'm comparing car dealerships to Apple :)

smolder 5y ago

It's really unforunate, since repair is a good value in terms of reducing externalities like e-waste and natural resource use, not to mention a potential way to develop electronics skills in our workforce with low-barrier-to-entry jobs.