Quote:
Originally Posted by Junket
It's more expensive to manufacture a replaceable battery. It has to have a hard shell then, a more expensive connector and it's shape and location become more constricted. It makes a product less competitive or profitable. Market history shows that people will pay for thinner device but not so much for less obvious advantages like replaceable batteries especially when that makes their iphone a millimeter or two thicker and 5 grams heavier. And it's easy to argue that it wouldn't be in the manufacturer's economic interest either.
If that iphone had a replaceable battery or memory card slot for that matter it would extend the product's lifespan. Apple makes more money if you buy a new phone though when you run low on memory or your battery begins to fail.
Apple, which has a very successful business model by most standards is infamous for strongly discouraging customers from repairing an iphone or macbook when they could buy a new one instead. Even to the point of grossly inflating the repair costs and lying about whether a repair is possible. You might want to watch a Louis Rossmann video on the subject sometime.
A replaceable battery would cannibalize a certain amount of new sales - one less reason to buy a new phone. And that phone would be fractionally thicker, heavier and less profitable. And epithets like thin and profit take on a religious fervor in Cupertino. And Amazon isn't adverse to making profits either and there is little push back from consumers.
When devices that do not have replaceable batteries, like Kindles or iphones have commanding market share we consumers are telling Jeff and Tim that replaceable batteries are a non-starter.
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The problem is we don't have a choice. Right now, there's no current Reader that has a user replaceable battery and no smartphone that has a user replaceable battery. So we either buy or do without. So you'd have no cell phone, no tablet, no Reader, no music player, or any other device that doesn't have a user replaceable battery. There are a lot of devices out there that we'd be doing without.