My guess, based on reading a few different copies of the article from different venues (since the information is a massive paywalled publication I do not want t

My guess, based on reading a few different copies of the article from different venues (since the information is a massive paywalled publication I do not want to pay 50 bucks a month for) is that the two companies were falsifying reports of defected glass to Apple to inflate costs to the company. They are responsible for shaping the raw glass from Corning into usable components. Once Apple started serializing the glass itself, this number suddenly dropped. Another theory is that they were stating the glass was faulty, when it wasn’t, and selling the glass to the gray market for 3rd party repairs. If they have to report serial numbers for faulty glass now, that makes it a whole lot easier to trace back to the specific vendor defrauding apple. https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/09/29/every-iphone-screen-has-a-barcode-to-prevent-a-manufacturing-scam https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/09/29/every-iphone-scre...