Light Bulbs, iPhones and your Right to Repair

A booming international light bulb market forced the market leaders to negotiate and restrict their activities to not interfere with each other’s businesses. Apart from splitting the market among themselves, the cartel also reduced the permissible life expectancy (yes, that’s a thing) to 1000 hours from 2500 hours. Manufacturers who produced light bulbs with a greater than permissible life were actually fined for having violated the cartel’s norms. Quite obviously, this was done to sell more light bulbs and increase revenues. Among other things, the cartel, one of the first truly international ones, was successful in raising prices, stifling innovation, and reducing quality.

I came across this story for the first time a few years back and quite honestly, I had dismissed it for another conspiracy theory. I mean, why would any government let a cartel of big corporations run a whole damn market without any intervention? Isn’t that like illegal or something? *Enter free-market capitalism*

Anyways, the cartel, which was originally supposed to run for 30 years till 1955, ironically burnt out well in advance, due to World War II. Today we don’t have to worry about expensive short-lived light bulbs thanks to technological advancement and innovations (that wouldn’t have happened had the cartel stayed by the way). What’s interesting to note here are two things-

1. Companies can make actual cartels, stifle innovation, drive up prices, reduce product life, all to mint more money
2. Consumers have little idea about how products work and are perhaps, not educated enough to call out the companys’ bluffs

Now if you had been thinking that these cartels are a thing of the past, I have bad news for you. Monopolies and oligopolies still exist and they are perhaps stronger than ever.

The technical term for this kind of business strategy is called ‘planned obsolescence. It essentially forces you to buy a new product or upgrade to a newer model of the same product by rendering your existing product useless, slow or unreliable within a set timeframe. There are multiples of carrying out this business strategy -

• Using low-quality, short-lasting mechanical parts, so the product automatically fails at some point, relatively early in its lifetime. One of the most relatable examples of this is fast fashion. Brands produce low-quality cheap clothes that lose their quality right after the first few washes.
• Using software to build products that automatically become non-functional after a set number of runs or duration of time, even if the product is mechanically and structurally functional. Sometimes, even if the mechanics of a product fail, the product is built in such a way that it is impossible for a consumer to repair their product. An example could be a printer that is programmed to fail after printing a certain number of times.
• Perceived obsolescence or using clever marketing strategies to make consumers believe that they need an upgrade, even when they don’t. An example of this could be a minor upgrade in the design or look of a smartphone, meant to make the customer feel like their existing smartphone is outdated.

While perceived obsolescence only plays on the typical consumer psychology but still gives the consumers a choice as to whether or not they wish to upgrade, the other two don't. Using cheaper quality products with poor mechanical strength helps cut down prices and in principle, can still be considered the consumer’s choice. The 3rd strategy of planned obsolescence, however, where pre-programmed software is used to tamper with a consumer’s product, is the concerning one. These products are built to get discarded and any attempt at repairing the product is made next to impossible.

In 2017, Apple came under fire for intentionally slowing down the earlier versions of iPhones in order to force consumers to upgrade to the newer versions. Recently, the company came under fire yet again for fusing solid-state drives to the logic board in its mac book pros. These drives, upon expiration, will render the whole system useless and consumers will be left with no choice but to buy a new device. A majority of electronic devices these days are impossible to dismantle. This means that even the smallest issue would force the customer to run to a company-authorized repair store. These stores enjoy all the monopoly and hence drive up the repair prices, sometimes, making the cost of repair just as much as the cost of a new product. Several car companies keep upgrading their car models annually. More often than not, these upgrades are only marginal improvements but they end up making spare parts almost inaccessible to the common person, making it impossible for them to carry out repairs.

Not only do such practices end up forcing the customers to pay more, but the environmental costs of planned obsolescence are also significant. Electronic waste is one of the fastest increasing waste categories across the developing world. These countries have little infrastructure to handle e-waste, most of which get contaminated and hence further difficult to repair or resume. The fact that companies make their products difficult to dismantle, implies that high-value materials, which could have compensated for the cost of waste handling and disposal, get further difficult to extract. Upon contamination, these wastes enter the landfill, from where they leach heavy metals and other hazardous chemicals into soil, water, and the air. Expensive materials get discarded unscientifically further straining the available raw material resources.

The right to repair movement is aimed at mandating original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to provide consumers and independent repair businesses equal access to repair documentation, diagnostics, tools, service parts, and firmware as their direct or authorized repair providers. Companies claim that these could risk copyright security and cybersecurity of a consumer’s device but activists say that these fears are unfounded and only an attempt at shifting the focus. More information about the movement can be found here