Rising component prices forced Samsung to increase the prices of some of its phones in several regions. But the effects of the current market conditions reach further than that – repair costs are going up as well.
In its home country of South Korea, Samsung has raised the price of repair materials for smartphones by an average of 5%, reports The Chosun. Other segments are affected as well – e.g. materials for home appliance repair now cost 9% more on average.
To put this in monetary terms, the average smartphone repair job became KRW 11,000 more expensive – this converts to $7.37 / €6.45 / £5.50 / ₹705. It’s not much, but it’s something to keep in mind.
The majority of the expense, 80%, when repairing a device comes from the replacement parts. The rest is labor costs and service fees, which won’t change. “Material costs have risen, leading to an unavoidable price increase. Labor and service fees remain the same as before,” said a Samsung Electronics Service official.
LG Electronics plans to keep repair costs for its appliances the same for now – alas, LG no longer makes phones. Again, this report concerns repair services in South Korea, but the situation is similar around the world.
We know what you are thinking – AI made memory expensive. And that’s true, but smartphone RAM and storage are not really components that can be repaired (usually, the whole motherboard gets swapped if there is an issue with one or the other).
The Chosun points the finger at higher prices for raw materials, which were caused by instability in the Middle East among other factors. One unnamed manufacturer told Korea’s Ministry of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises and Startups that “raw material prices surged by approximately 60% in the first half of this year due to supply and raw material shortages.”