25 year-old's company makes millions on cracked iPhone screens [video]

[EDIT] Seems martin_ meant you can buy a new button/sensor and a repair kit, and then follow instructions similar to these: http://www.imore.com/how-diy-repair-stuck-or-broken-iphone-4...

Torn• 13 years ago

So does it fill in the cracks with something - or is it a complete screen replacement?

sbuccini2• 13 years ago

This is definitely an issue, but I wouldn't say that Apple refuses to touch it.

My power button crapped out on me several days ago, and I got it replaced under the stock warranty (NOT Apple Care) with no questions asked by making an appointment at the Genius Bar. Another friend did the same thing at a different location, and they again fixed her phone with no hassle.

I offer this personal anecdote to others in case they find themselves in a similar situation: try going into your nearest store and see what happens.

jpdoctor2• 13 years ago

This is definitely an issue, but I wouldn't say that Apple refuses to touch it.

I should have qualified it as: Apple refuses to touch it if you've owned the iPhone for more than 12 months. (The apple discussions link made that more clear, but I should have quoted it here.)

tomkinstinch• 13 years ago

Where does iCracked get the displays/glass? What's to prevent Apple from drying up the supply?

hello_newman• 13 years ago

The glass on the devices appears to be "generic", not really "apple glass". They manufacture them in China. This is a great article on them; http://www.inc.com/30under30/burt-helm/icracked-aj-forsythe-...

JoshTv• 13 years ago

You can always make money out of broken stuffs/junks/trash. With the right idea, skill,and marketing; people can earn millions like these guys did.

aj_icracked• 13 years ago

Haha, still working on the millions part. We're launching an insurance company, buyback, and redistribution in the next 6 months so we're really excited about that.

Thanks for the comments, good and bad :)

tagabek• 13 years ago

This is really neat. I really appreciated the point that he made about "empowering people to take control of their financial futures".

namuol• 13 years ago

It's pretty easy to do. My sister just gave me her old cracked iPhone 4 because she thought it was worthless. It still worked fine, but I fixed the screen for about $30 and a few hours of sweaty-palm dis/assembly. Works perfectly now.

hippich• 13 years ago

i believe iphone 4s and 5 have welded glass or something making it much harder to replace alone. as a result usually they replace lcd+glass which make it much more expensive.

aliston• 13 years ago

You can generally buy the digitizer + lcd on ebay for about 30 bucks. It's a lot of small screws, but really not too difficult to swap out. Took me about 45 minutes.

TheBiv• 13 years ago

I loved his smile when asked why he is building the company...it made it seem like he wanted to say "Because I can make a lot of money with it", but luckily he chose the right answer of framing who his service is helping. Really great execution there!

cheery• 13 years ago

Pick a fatal design flaw in popular product, such as fragile display in iPhone. Build up a repair service around that flaw.

If I invented a similar get-rich-quick-scheme I might also grin like a trollface and that guy in the video.

glomph• 13 years ago

It is depressing that it is news that there is money in fixing popular things.

jrochkind1• 13 years ago

Indeed. Throw-away society, bad for the environment.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted.

crgt• 13 years ago

My iPhone screen is cracked. Do I really have to give up my contact info just to find out how much it costs to fix it with this service? Or did I just miss pricing on the mobile site somehow?

randomdrake2• 13 years ago

Prices vary from iTech to iTech so we need a bit of information to connect you with an iTech to find out the price for their services.

If you're interested, we also have mail-in and DIY services that you can check out on our shop here:

http://shop.icracked.com

jusben13695• 13 years ago

FWIW's I think your story and brand is much more powerful if it's the same price no matter where and when. Maybe it's tough to make it comparable between Manhattan and small town USA (where the expectation around the labor cost is dramatically different) but if you could somehow pull it off I think it would be good.

abhiv• 13 years ago

Genuinely curious about how this is a venture-funded company. How is this scalable? Is there any tech involved at all? (Not that technology is necessary to be venture-funded, but it helps with nonlinear growth.)

randomdrake2• 13 years ago

We believe that this is absolutely scalable as we've watched successful growth into national and international markets. On the technology front, we have created an incredible on demand geolocational dispatch and communications service. Our unique iOS app for our worldwide iTechs empowers them to be connected to this service at all times allowing them to successfully run their businesses. We're really doing some pretty exciting things beyond fixing phones and we can't wait for everyone to see what's next with our technologies.

halcyondaze• 13 years ago

Use more buzzwords, please.

akg_672• 13 years ago

It is just a PR piece to get attention of potential funding sources. As I mentioned previously in my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5272017, I don't believe numbers add up. Business is unlikely to be scalable or around in next 5 years.

kenrikm3• 13 years ago

Your math is wrong, and your assumptions incorrect.

jusben13695• 13 years ago

Well venture funding helps you take advantage of a time window really. That is, if we added substantial cash resources to this company could it capture way more market share and be in a much better position in 5 years (vs not taking cash now and growing organically) If yes, great. How big is the market? Needless to say there are a lot of screens out there and they're growing fast. Tech should only matter here in that is it being used well to out execute competitors as a service based business.

hemancuso2• 13 years ago

Interestingly - in the past few weeks the Genius Bar in most locations (I can confirm boston/cambridge) has gotten a calibration machine letting them do a screen replacement in store for $150 (cheaper and done by apple). Refurb is $229.

Tough to compete with that.

http://gizmodo.com/the-apple-stores-new-mystery-machine-help...

Peroni• 13 years ago

Is $150 considered cheap in the US? I only ask as I had my iPhone4S screen repaired for just under £30 here in the UK by a local electronics shop and the quality was outstanding.

hemancuso2• 13 years ago

I was just comparing the rates for iCracked and Apple. There is a place in harvard square that does it for $50.

ibz• 13 years ago

I was traveling in Laos last year and I fell while riding a scooter through the jungle and my iPhone cracked. As I reached Cambodia, I walked in a random phone repair shop in Phnom Penh and had my screen completely replaced in 10 minutes for about $40 (probably overcharged for being a tourist). Still using that same iPhone now, one year later. I would imagine phone repair shops everywhere can do this, or not? While watching the video, I almost felt like watching The Onion.

kayoone2• 13 years ago

yeah thought the same. There are like 3-4 shops that do this in every city. When my girlfriend recently cracked her iPhone 4 screen i just went on ebay to get a new one for EUR 38 (Germany) and repaired it myself. Works totally fine now, i wouldnt do this on a brand new iphone 5 though ;)

jskonhovd• 13 years ago

Phone repair and insurance is a huge business. This seems alright. A intelligent consumer can find a deal better than 200$, but convenience is the more important to a lot a people. Some people don't care how expensive it is, they need their phone the next day.

MrMan• 13 years ago

i am not saying it will happen, but apple could put them out of business in an instant...

jusben13695• 13 years ago

That's pretty much true of any body in the Apple ecosystem though should they take a direct interest.

hrabago• 13 years ago

So it's just like App companies then.

jusben13695• 13 years ago

Hmmm. I googled, found a college kid nearby, met him at Subway and he did my (4) in 30 minutes for $75. 3 months later no issues. Maybe the 4 is meaningfully cheaper?

alayne• 13 years ago

In the IPhone 5, the glass and digitizer are bonded. Apple charges $149 to replace them. I'm sure it's possible to do it cheaper.

kenrikm3• 13 years ago

Yes, the iCracked iPhone 4 screen repair usually runs around $80 with a 99 Year Part Warranty. iPhone 5 Parts are more costly right now and thus the repair cost is higher.

pathikj• 13 years ago

This could work. I met a college senior few weeks ago and he talked to me about how he recently started a small venture with a similar tech background but a different business model, that is, buying broken phones for cheap, repairing them and selling refurbished at much better price. His volumes made no sense to me then. Now I see the big picture.

brianbreslin2• 13 years ago

A friend of mine runs a repair shop in Miami. He told me that a few of his competitors were raided by the DOJ for doing unlicensed repairs using Oem parts from china. Apple apparently didn't want anyone other than official stores doing repairs. Guy whose shop was raided had thousands in parts confiscated.

joonix• 13 years ago

Huh? This doesn't make any sense. There is no IP right that lets you prevent non OEM parts to be installed in a product. If that were the case mechanics would all be out of business. There must have been another issue here.

oscillator• 13 years ago

The parent said it was OEM parts.

kenrikm3• 13 years ago

You can't use parts with Apple's logo on them.

yardie• 13 years ago

Sounds like they was raided for having stolen OEM parts or likely something else illegal. Apple isn't a government body, they don't have licenses. There are a few reasons a business can be raided, taxes (and Miami clubs were notorious for not paying them) is damn near the #1 reason.

brianbreslin2• 13 years ago

well i was told these oem parts were being ordered from china from the same factories making them for apple. so maybe its all "unlicensed" or not apple certified, yet these guys were passing them off as such?

pjbrunet• 13 years ago

What I want to know: Why can't these phones use plastic screens? Good acrylic is more clear than glass, lighter, safer, more durable. I wouldn't be shocked if iPhones were designed to shatter easily.

I'm seriously thinking of switching back to my ancient Blackberry: plastic screen that doesn't crack, battery lasts a week, make calls by pressing one button, I can turn it off and on easily...

pak• 13 years ago

The capacitive technology that powers multitouch screens requires (or works much better with) glass, I believe. Also, LCD technology itself requires glass. The less and thinner the layers, the closer it feels like your finger gets to the image, and the better the UX is. There are iPhone cases that essentially do what you are suggesting with a plastic overlay.

zurn• 13 years ago

Citation needed - from what I've experienced most older Android devices have plastic screens and multitouch works fine, and they don't break when dropped.

If there are glass layers in there somewhere, maybe they're somehow protected by the plastic. Or maybe the all-out antiscratch optimized glass in iDevices is just much more brittle than regular glass.

hnriot• 13 years ago

Me too, my Bold was so much better. I miss that week of battery life, I'm forever charging this thing. Admittedly the iPhone does more, my bb browser sucked, but the camera was great, the damn thing could get run over by one of those stupid big pick up trucks and still work and the keyboard was a million times better than touch on the iPhone. I switched because I got sick of waiting for bb to bring out something new. Finally they have so maybe it's time.

I think glass seemed cooler so they went with it, maybe the front needs it for their current tech in screens, but making the back on the 4 out of glass was just bad design.

tracker1• 13 years ago

Having had several android phones, I can definitely say the gorilla glass 2 on my nexus 4 works and feels a LOT better than any other phone I've used regularly. (I don't like the slick back so much, have a rubber case for that reason)... I've only dropped it once (in a parking lot) and lucky it didn't break.

I have seen plenty of plastic phones break too. I'd rather have something that works better in my hand.

smcguinness• 13 years ago

I've tried a couple times to have a repair through icracked but never got a reply from them. Always got a message that said 3-5 techs were notified, but I guess they didn't want to repair my cracked iPhone.

kayoone2• 13 years ago

Apple should just fix their phones. Its ridiculous how fast the screen cracks on an iPhone. I have so many friends (me included) who had a cracked iphone 4/4s/5 in the past few years while my brother drops his Galaxy S2 all the time and the screen is totally fine.

ErikGelderblom• 13 years ago

My Galaxy's screen broke the first time I dropped it :(

workbench• 13 years ago

The 3G clearly had a much stronger screen. The 4 and up screens scratch as soon as you look at them the wrong way. Had a 3G for years and 0 scratches, had a 4S for a week and got 2.

chiph• 13 years ago

Contra-anecdotal evidence: I owned 3 iPhones over the years (original, 3GS, 4S) and never used a case. I never broke anything on them. The only concession to preservation I made was to make sure it was the only thing in that pocket (no change, keys, pocketknife, etc. in there with it)

belorn• 13 years ago

Can't apple just add some more DRM into the screen, which would then allow apple to simply take over the market that Forsythe have built up?

robmcm• 13 years ago

I have a friend that started doing this years ago for iPods and is still going for all apple's iOS devices. I used to do a lot of his web work back in my uni days. http://www.iphonerepairs.co.uk/

25 year-old's company makes millions on cracked iPhone screens [video]

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