Apple Is Selling iPad Repair Parts for Astronomical Prices

In late May, Apple announced what seemed on its face to be a big, positive development for iPad owners: It was going to begin selling repair parts for iPads to the general public, which is a requirement of a series of new right-to-repair laws. “With today’s announcement, we’re excited to expand our repair services to more customers, enabling them to further extend the life of their products—all without compromising safety, security, or privacy,” Brian Naumann, Apple’s vice president of AppleCare, said in a press release announcing the move.

The announcement was generally covered positively by the press: “Save Money, Make Your iPad Last Longer,” a Forbes headline read, for example. But independent repair professionals who have used the program told 404 Media that the prices Apple is charging for some repair parts are absurdly high, and that this functionally means that the iPad is as unrepairable as it has always been.

“As is typical for Apple, they’ve been pushing and testing the limits as time has gone on, and now they pushed too far. There are plenty of other examples of absurdly priced parts from Self Service, but these iPad parts are by far the worst,” Brian Clark, the cower of the iGuys Tech Shop, told 404 Media. 

“For years, Apple effectively considered the iPad non-repairable. They did not offer any repairs on iPads, and Apple authorized service providers were not allowed to do iPad repairs of any kind, so this was a huge shift in their view of iPads. I was excited until the day they actually put the parts up and seeing the ridiculous prices of things, it was really, really disappointing,” Clark added. “It kind of sends the message that they don’t really want iPads to be repaired.

Clark points out that a new charge port for an iPad Pro 11, a part that goes bad all the time, costs $250 from Apple. Aftermarket charge ports, meanwhile, can be found for less than $20. “It’s a very basic part, and I just can’t see any reasonable explanation that part should be $250 from Apple,” he said. “That’s a component that probably costs them a few dollars to make.” 

Clark said a digitizer for an iPad A16 is $200. That part can be bought from third-party suppliers for $50, and the iPad A16 sells brand new from Apple for $349, Clark said. The replacement screen assembly for an iPad Pro 13 costs $749 from Apple. 

Jonathan Strange, the founder of XiRepair, put together a spreadsheet of all the new parts and found that more than a third of the iPad parts Apple is now selling are not being sold at a price that is economically viable for independent repair shops. The way he calculated this was by taking the price of the part, adding in $85 for labor and a 10 percent profit margin for a repair shop. If the total repair cost was more than half the price of buying a totally new device, he considers it to be not economically viable.

“Almost NO iPads with multi-repair needs (meaning an iPad has a cracked screen and needs a battery, for example), is a viable option when using only genuine OEM service parts,” Strange said. 

Strange said that when analyzing iPad part prices, he found that nearly every part seemed to be correlated with the replacement value of the device versus what the part should probably actually cost. 

“I don’t believe Apple prices parts based on their cost to manufacturer plus a small margin, I fully believe they are pricing parts based on retail replacement cost of the device. Apple seems to keep almost all their repair parts plus an average shop’s labor right at about 50 percent of the replacement cost of the device. I believe they do this to discourage repair,” Strange told 404 Media. “It doesn’t cost $250 or even $100 to manufacture a charge port cable, but I believe Apple is charging this because they know if the price is high enough no one will buy it. If right-to-repair laws force them to sell parts they’ll do it but they will make them super high.”

It’s not clear what, if anything, can be done about Apple’s iPad part pricing. State right-to-repair laws require companies to sell parts to the public on “fair and reasonable terms,” but it’s not clear whether Apple’s iPad part prices are egregious enough to be out of line with different state laws.

Nathan Proctor, head of repair for the consumer rights group US PIRG, told 404 Media that Apple’s pricing is not competitive in many cases. “If Apple wants repair shops to use their brand-name parts, they should be more competitive in how they price them,” he said. “Some of the problems that we have is that Apple has long treated the iPad as a non-repairable product, despite the fact that many independent shops fix them. I expect iPad repair to get better over time, and there is more thought in the design process to repair—another positive development driven from progress on right-to-repair.”

Strange echoed this sentiment, and said that regardless of the sometimes absurd pricing, the program is a good start because “Apple has never repaired iPads.”

“Apple hasn’t repaired their iPad products not because they aren’t repairable, but because Apple’s network of retail shops can’t handle the complexity. A geek squad or genius bar employee at an Apple store doing an iPad repair is like a Ford sales rep doing a Ford transmission replacement—it would be a disaster due to complexity, differences in training and just lack of experience,” Strange said. 

“Imagine the average customer breaks their iPad, goes to their nearest Apple store only to be told that they have to mail it off and they will replace it with a new one, only to have a friend tell them that a local repair shop that’s partnered with Apple can do it in house the same day,” he added. “I believe that Apple being forced to service iPad parts will ultimately break their service model: either they admit that independents have skills their average retail worker doesn’t have or they will damage a whole lot of customer’s iPads over the coming months.”

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.