Since smartphones arrived, big troubles have begun for the mobile phone multinationals. Cell phones were very resistant, they lasted a long time overcoming repeated and disastrous falls. Then here comes the new smart phones, "jocks", smart. But, with the exception of Nokia, which has always had formidable, almost eternal devices, very robust, equipped with extraordinary software, the vast majority of smartphones are and were fragile, delicate, even if they became increasingly gifted, "intelligent", thin. And over the years, the problems have worsened; everyone knows – but they have hardly ever written about it – that the latest collections break down more and more often, that they have very short planned obsolescence, precarious compatibility…..And soon the troubles with the batteries began, not in 2016 as it is happened to Samsung, but well before. And everyone was as silent as manhole covers because they were full of the roaring advertising of these big hi tech, hi touch, even hi bombs since so many smartphones have exploded. In reality, their overwhelming success immediately forced the multinationals to open factories, to speed up the pace of production and delivery but, at the same time, also to cut prices.
The chaebol price war
A price war where the Korean state chaebol stood out, having only one purpose: not only and not so much to conquer market shares but to ruthlessly knock down their competitors. Does the market ask for ever more performing and thinner smartphones? And so on with the design of devices, now called phablets (smartphones and tablets together) which are in reality advanced telephony and IT systems that are increasingly thinner but with increasingly larger displays, and an increase in internal components that causes growing failures.
Furthermore, the price war and chain promotions force producers to cut the quality of the entire supply chain and above all the very expensive incoming, in-line and outgoing quality controls. Time is also cut for component suppliers and factories because time costs money too, of course. Chinese and Asian factories are not at all those aseptic and robotic production spaces, on the contrary; anyone who has worked in China knows that Chinese labor is cheerfully inaccurate… But since certifications of third-party laboratory checks are required in many markets, some manufacturers have preferred to provide documentation of checks carried out on their own. In fact, a third-party body would have found, with not even very strong evidence, that some smartphones were at a very high risk of explosion.
The batteries? They last for nothing
And so the batteries and components soon die or catch fire well before 2016, only everything is hushed up. This is how already a few years earlier Apple was forced to equip its iPhones with a Smart Battery Case, a second battery that makes the iPhone 6 a little more autonomous. This is how the powerful North American consumer associations move with class action, of which the latest is dated December 2015 when it was also reported that the display often did not respond to the touch of the fingers.
But what was most surprising was to discover that the most effective actions had been initiated by the Chinese consumer defense associations who had "warned" Apple China of the problems encountered. And a "globalized" diatribe had begun over who had to pay the damages. When the Chinese associations invited Apple to hurry up, giving a ten-day deadline, on pain of launching actions and boycotts, the problem was solved. How it had to be solved: whoever makes a mistake pays and Apple had to meet the commitments. But in the end: how much is the disastrous incendiary debut of the Galaxy Note worth? Just for the replacements and without calculating the damage to the image and the shares, a billion dollars. As a start.
Source: lacasadipaola.it
