[gruez]

What's the "game-theoretic equilibrium" that's preventing repairable phones if consumers demand it? We have repairable versions of laptops and phones but they haven't really caught on outside of niche circles. Maybe people don't actually care about repairability?

[abdullahkhalids]

There are two kinds of players in the market: a large consumer class, and a small collection of oligopolistic producers. The game-theoretic equilibrium is in the actions of the producers.

Customers have many different criteria by which they judge phones: price, performance, available apps, social desirability, repairability etc. I would say that repairability is of lower importance than other criteria.

Producers know that selling unrepairable phones produce more profits long term. Obviously repairable phones are also a few perfect more expensive. So from the 00s when phones were largely repairable, to today, producers have sequentially produced phones that are less repairable but a bit cheaper. Ad campaigns have been used to make thinner monolithic phones as more socially desirable [1]. This also changes how customers rate the importance of different criteria.

Any new producer who creates a repairable phone not only has to produce a more expensive phone, but also has to create a niche of customers, against the competitor ad campaigns, that value that repairability. Hence, that new producer is not profitable. This is the equilibrium which explains that lack of mainstream repairable phones in the market.

But of course, consumers want repairable phones, but only if everyone else gets them as well - so they aren't uncool. Which is why different consumer groups have advocated to lawmakers, and now we are getting a law that forces everyone to change in tandem.

[1] Not much different from the cigarette ads of the yesteryears.

[gruez]

>Any new producer who creates a repairable phone not only has to produce a more expensive phone, but also has to create a niche of customers, against the competitor ad campaigns, that value that repairability. Hence, that new producer is not profitable. This is the equilibrium which explains that lack of mainstream repairable phones in the market.

But if a repairable phone is cheaper for the consumer overall (the don't have to replace as often), why would this be a problem? Japanese cars outcompeted American cars because they were more reliable, and consumers recognized that. Shouldn't consumers jump at the chance of reducing their overall phone TCO by 50% or whatever?

[abdullahkhalids]

Good question. (1) People's preferences are a function of time [1]. (2) And people find it difficult to estimate unexpected future costs.

So at buy time, people don't prefer repairability very high, which is some uncertain future cost. Which is why they make the short term decision to buy the cheaper sexier phone. Later on, when the phone starts to break down, they start caring about it a lot more. We know the latter is true because consumer group advocacy is determined by asking people what they want.

Another tactic phone manufacturers employ is that they don't talk about repairability anywhere, so most consumers don't even know phones are repairable. They think you just have to buy a new phone. It's like if your bowl broke, you would just go and buy a new one because you believe bowls cannot be repaired. But if you belonged in the right area/tradition of japan, you would just take the pieces of the bowl and join them together [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_preference#Temporal_disco...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi

[gruez]

>So at buy time, people don't prefer repairability very high, which is some uncertain future cost. Which is why they make the short term decision to buy the cheaper sexier phone. Later on, when the phone starts to break down, they start caring about it a lot more.

You can make the same argument for cars, yet reliable japanese cars won out. Smartphones have been around for 15 years now? I think that's long enough for people to figure out how much repairs they need.

> We know the latter is true because consumer group advocacy is determined by asking people what they want.

And yet their purchasing decisions don't line up with what their survey replies are, by and large. It's not because of lack of choice, repairable phones exist, and have existed for a while now. Fairphone is on its 6th iteration now? Yet its uptake is lackluster. Between stated preferences and revealed preferences, I'm going with the latter.

>Another tactic phone manufacturers employ is that they don't talk about repairability anywhere, so most consumers don't even know phones are repairable. They think you just have to buy a new phone.

If you think consumers can't be bothered to do a "[phone name] repairability" search (despite the fact that they care about such a thing, as you claim above), and need to have the info spoon fed to them by the manufacturers, then maybe they don't really care about it?

> It's like if your bowl broke, you would just go and buy a new one because you believe bowls cannot be repaired. But if you belonged in the right area/tradition of japan, you would just take the pieces of the bowl and join them together [2].

Of course, in our modern economy, it makes little sense to fix broken bowls. They can be manufactured so cheaply and fixing it manually taxes so much time/materials that the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Something similar applies to phones, only that replacing a phone also comes with the additional benefit that it has a faster cpu + more memory + better camera. You don't get any of that by making phones repairable.