It was a David v Goliath fight. Apple, the iPhone giant, was suing a tiny repair store owned by Henrik Huseby in the Norwegian town of Ski. The case had gone all the way to Norway’s supreme court.
Huseby had been accused by Apple of importing allegedly “counterfeit” iPhone parts, including 63 iPhone screens, to repair phones at his shop. He was on the hook for tens of thousands of pounds in legal costs.
“What’s at stake is our right to repair – in Norway and everywhere else,” Huseby said ahead of the hearing.
In this case, Goliath triumphed. The court ruled in Apple’s favour in June last year in a move that was decried by “right to repair” activists.
These groups argue that Big Tech firms have made it difficult for independent shops to repair devices and in some cases making it so hard that consumers are forced to upgrade.
But last month, after years of being viewed as the movement’s arch nemesis, Apple performed an apparent volte-face. It announced a new “self-repair service”, offering to sell genuine spare parts, providing tools and opening up manuals so consumers can repair their own devices.
The scheme will start next year and apply to its latest iPhone 12 and 13 models and its new generation of MacBooks.
Apple’s decision is likely to have ramifications for thousands of independent repair shops and its Big Tech rivals.
“This is a huge deal,” says Kyle Weins, founder of iFixit, a US device repair website. “Where Apple goes, the whole industry follows.”
Over the past decade, smartphones have become harder to take apart for anyone lacking specialist tools or machines without the risk of destroying the device.
Apple became one of the first manufacturers to use a fully integrated battery in 2007, and rivals followed suit. More advanced screens and batteries meant tech firms could push consumers towards their own shops and repair services.
Activists argue this is contributing to a growing pile of e-waste. In the UK, Britons threw away an average of 23.9kg in 2019, the second-highest figure in the world. A record 53.6m metric tonnes of e-waste were produced globally in last year, according to a UN monitor.
Smartphones in particular use tiny amounts of rare earth metals that often have intensive and dirty extraction processes.
It is not just the tech sector facing demands to improve repairs. Doctors have complained that medical hardware is made impossible to fix by anyone except the manufacturer, pushing up costs. Farmers have bemoaned John Deere tractors, claiming they cannot get the proper tools or diagnostic software to make repairs.
In some cases, tech firms have warned that allowing consumers to repair their own devices could be dangerous, due to the way batteries are integrated into the devices. Consumers also would run the risk of damaging the device due to parts being welded together in such a way as to make it all but impossible to take it apart.
However, tech companies have also been working to burnish their environmental credentials, investing in green energy supplies and recycled materials. They have also battled concerns that consumers are all too quickly encouraged to give up on an old device and upgrade even if it is still perfectly functional.
Apple, for instance, has increased the amount of software support it provides to iPhones, in some cases for more than five years. It has also cut down on the packaging in its new phones by no longer including chargers.
Its most recent MacBooks include fully recycled aluminium casings. The iPhone 12 also used recycled rare earth elements, which are notoriously challenging to recover, in its cameras and MagSafe connectors.
