April 16, 2008
Cell phone street repair as an industry
Street repair services for cell phones are a big industry in India. Technicians there get a diploma from a 'Mobile Repairing Institute.' News.com reports.
"Jan Chipchase leads a team at Finnish cell phone giant Nokia that's trying to lower the cost of phones for emerging markets, an effort that's part market development and part recycling.
The group of 15 has scanned bazaars and street shops in places as diverse as Ghana, Brazil, Iran, India, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, China, and Mongolia to learn how end users relate to their products--and they discovered surprises that could impact consumer electronics makers within the next 15 years.
Their main finding: there's no limit to how cell phones can be modified and how their life spans can be extended.
And breathing new life into phones usually doesn't take a complex set of tools. In most cases, handsets can be reborn with the help of just a screwdriver and a toothbrush sprayed with alcohol to clean the contact heads.
"The informal repair culture...makes mobile phones something more affordable to price-sensitive customers, increasing the lifetime of products while lowering the environmental-impact risks," he said, adding that with new phones appearing constantly, street mechanics very quickly learn how to work with new models."
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