The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
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The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
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Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#2Related iFixit blog post from 3 years ago:
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#3Related from 2 months ago:
We're ending our Samsung collaboration
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#4> Wiens sips a Diet Coke and settles in as I start explaining the framework of our conversation. He interrupts me politely to get a big caveat out of the way related to confidentiality terms iFixit still has with Samsung.
I really struggle to read these types of interviews. If I wanted to read the novel I would buy the book… but if I’m reading an article I don’t want the fluff…
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#5> “I don’t know why Samsung insists on charging so much for service parts,” Wiens says, visibly frustrated. “The prices that we see are out of line with what we know components actually cost to manufacture.” Wiens starts to elaborate but stops himself. He clarifies that he would love to discuss this more, but his contract with Samsung prevents him from doing so.
I mean, it's pretty easy to guess:
They want to run the spare parts division at a profit, they know they've got no competition (except used parts off recycled phones) and like some car makers, they know that means they can charge through the nose.
Wikipedia tells me [1] Samsung released 17 distinct model numbers in 2023, and 30 in 2022. Presumably a lot of those have custom, nonstandard screens with rounded corners and curved edges and camera notches and folding and fingerprint readers and whatnot. So presumably the minimum order quantity is huge - they can't just hold a few spare screens and make more on demand, they probably have to buy (and pay for) several years of spares upfront.
And of course every phone will have multiple parts, different subassemblies (do you want to order the screen with or without the fingerprint reader?) and maybe different colour schemes as well. And any spare parts you make and don't sell are wasted.
So it's very easy for a spare parts division to be very inefficient, if it's not well managed. If they're determined to run the division at a profit - that inefficiency gets passed right along to the end user.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy#Release_history
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#6> Wiens sips a Diet Coke and settles in as I start explaining the framework of our conversation. He interrupts me politely to get a big caveat out of the way related to confidentiality terms iFixit still has with Samsung. I really struggle to read these types of interviews. If I wanted to read the novel I would buy the book… but if I’m reading an article I don’t want the fluff…
Same, really annoys me. Guess writer has a word-count target to meet and adding such fluff is an easy way to get there.
Guess one could train an LLM to de-fluff articles?
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#7> Wiens sips a Diet Coke and settles in as I start explaining the framework of our conversation. He interrupts me politely to get a big caveat out of the way related to confidentiality terms iFixit still has with Samsung. I really struggle to read these types of interviews. If I wanted to read the novel I would buy the book… but if I’m reading an article I don’t want the fluff…
Same for me. I'm sure that commercial writers these days face all kinds of pressure regarding their writing styles.
But usually I just want pyramid-style writing for the news.
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#8I really liked the plans Samsung employees had to give old phones a new life. I have a box of mostly working phones from different companies and I often wish there was an easy way to use them for different automation tasks around the house.
Anyway, I'm not surprised it didn't work. Engineers see possibilities while lawyers only think about how something goes very wrong and the company ends up in court.
Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#9> Wiens sips a Diet Coke and settles in as I start explaining the framework of our conversation. He interrupts me politely to get a big caveat out of the way related to confidentiality terms iFixit still has with Samsung. I really struggle to read these types of interviews. If I wanted to read the novel I would buy the book… but if I’m reading an article I don’t want the fluff…
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Re: The Story of Samsung's failed deal with iFixit, as told by iFixit's CEO
#10In my opinion, if you are going position yourself as a neutral arbiter of device repairability, it does not pass the smell test to enter into for-profit business relationships with the companies manufacturing the devices you rate.
Providing consumers with information on where to find reputable companies selling repair parts would be a much more palatable alternative to selling them yourself.
> “I don’t know why Samsung insists on charging so much for service parts,” Wiens says, visibly frustrated. “The prices that we see are out of line with what we know components actually cost to manufacture.” Wiens starts to elaborate but stops himself. He clarifies that he would love to discuss this more, but his contract with Samsung prevents him from doing so.
In this case, the for-profit business relationship with Samsung also stands in the way of advocating for consumers.