Why #apple and other #tech companies are fighting to keep devices hard to repair
Apple is the largest company on Earth by market cap, and its success is derived from selling brand-new high-end smartphones consistently month after month. At the peak of its iPhone business, back in 2015, Apple sold a staggering 231.5 million smartphones. Though sales have begun to slow, that one device alone still accounts for more than 50 percent of Apple’s entire business. The company’s second quarter earnings results for 2017, reported on Tuesday, showed a quarterly profit of $8.7 billion, a majority of which came from the sale of 41 million iPhones.
But one of the reasons Apple can sell so many new devices is that we keep tossing aside our old ones, either because the battery life has grown worse or a new, more advanced model just…
