> The main way screens appear in the repair business is from companies in China that buy back screens with broken glass but functional LCD.
That's really interesting. I had assumed these were being manufactured somewhere to fit into apple devices, but instead there're huge operations that are buying tons of broken screens and essentially refurbishing them? Is that for legal reasons or cost reasons or other?
I'm curious: what does the supply chain look like?
A) Person breaks their screen, how much do they get from one of those shops that buy broken phones? Does that firm then break it down and sell the parts? Like a smart phone chop shop?
B) If so, who are they selling to? Surely not the refurb factories themselves, the factories wouldn't want to deal with that many individual people. So are people aggregating these and then selling in bulk to manufacturers? Any idea on the pricing around that? Does there seem to be a dominant player in the market or are there many people doing this?
C) After refurb, how much does the new screen then go for? You mentioned it's like a market--what's the range been in the last few years vs today?
That's really interesting. I had assumed these were being manufactured somewhere to fit into apple devices, but instead there're huge operations that are buying tons of broken screens and essentially refurbishing them? Is that for legal reasons or cost reasons or other?
I'm curious: what does the supply chain look like?
A) Person breaks their screen, how much do they get from one of those shops that buy broken phones? Does that firm then break it down and sell the parts? Like a smart phone chop shop?
B) If so, who are they selling to? Surely not the refurb factories themselves, the factories wouldn't want to deal with that many individual people. So are people aggregating these and then selling in bulk to manufacturers? Any idea on the pricing around that? Does there seem to be a dominant player in the market or are there many people doing this?
C) After refurb, how much does the new screen then go for? You mentioned it's like a market--what's the range been in the last few years vs today?
And what about Android?