How a small change at Apple could have serious consequences on the repair market

Historically quite hostile to home repair of its iPhones, Apple has relaxed in recent years. The Cupertino company now offers spare parts for its devices, repair guidesand even designs iPhones more repairable than ever. But with the latest update to its iOS 18 mobile operating system, the company also introduces a potentially disastrous software lock for the second-hand and used spare parts market.

To discourage iPhone theft, Apple offers a tool on iOS 18 allowing you to “link” the components of your iPhone to your iCloud account. Thus, if the phone is stolen, it cannot be resold for its parts since they will display an error message when installed in a new phone.

On paper, the idea is great. By rendering the iPhone and its parts entirely unusable if declared lost, Apple makes iPhone theft a virtually sterile practice. Alas, this software lock also risks having an annoying side effect for the second-hand market.

“Locked” phones in chaos

As John Bumstead notesardent defender of the right to repair across the Atlantic, this iCloud lock could send piles of functional iPhones to the shredder. In fact, thousands of these smartphones still attached to the iCloud account of their former owners are recovered each year by American refurbishers.

Until now, these devices could be taken apart and their components then supplied the second-hand parts market. Not ideal, the solution still had the advantage of increasing the stock of available spare parts. With strict matching of parts, this would become impossible and these mobiles would then be condemned to transform into metallic muesli.

At the moment, the iCloud lock on coins does not strictly prevent their use. Affected iPhones simply display an error message and block certain features. But these pop-ups “anxiety-inducing and frightening to people”according to Thibaud Hug de Larauze (CEO of Back Market), could put a brake on the second-hand market.

66,000 working iPhones forced to be reverse engineered

“Imagine having to buy a screen to repair a customer's phone while knowing that there is only a 60% chance that the pairing will go well […] No independent repairer, parts seller or reconditioner can take this risk”details John Bumstead to the media Fight to Repair.

According to the Wireless Alliancea group of companies from across the Atlantic specializing in the recycling of electronic devices, “42% of iPhones we recover are locked and bricked” via iCloud. Far from all being stolen, these mobiles are simply sent to the second-hand market by users who do not think about deleting their iCloud account from the device and are not aware of the problems that this type of forgetting poses. .

Already in 2019, the media Vice recounted that a single American company had, in three years, had to reverse engineer 66,000 perfectly functional iPhonesbut rendered unusable by an iCloud lock. In the United States, the number of locked devices arriving on reconditioner workbenches increases drastically year after year.

A risk more environmental than industrial

In France, the situation is somewhat different. The major French reconditioners supply their phones via well-established industrial circuits or the intermediaries immediately rule out “clouded” phones, explains Christophe Brunot, co-founder of Largo. As a result, it is difficult to know how many locked mobiles are circulating on the second-hand market, but in the highly regulated French reconditioned industry, these problems are relatively isolated, we are told.

“On the other hand, this will impact the waste marketnuance the manager of Largo. Some D3E management operators come to collect recycled products and sell used spare parts.” This “cannibalization” parts, as it is called, could well be impacted by the new features of iOS 18.

In France therefore, “the impact is more environmental than industrial”explains Christophe Brunot. Refurbishers will be little affected, but “the environmental risk remains significant, because this will generate tons of additional waste”concludes the manager.

Simple solutions

As is often the case, the situation is neither all black nor all white. Limiting phone theft is a good way to avoid premature renewal of our devices, but should this be done at the expense of the second-hand and second-hand market, essential cogs in the climate transition? In a report published in 2019an American consumer defense association detailed some interesting ideas on this subject.

Faced with a locked iPhone, a refurbisher or a D3E specialist could, for example, send the IMEI number of the mobile to Apple, which could unlock it remotely if the phone has not been formally declared stolen. It would even be possible to directly ask the user to unlock their mobile remotely, for example via a notification displayed on their new phone.

Will matching parts via iCloud make the theft of devices obsolete or will it prevent manufacturers from developing the second-hand market? Only time will tell, but pitting these two facets of our digital lives against each other already seems like a problem in itself.