I recently replaced the screen on a friends iPhone 4S, and it made me wonder how profitable it would be to do as a kind of hobby. Has anyone tried this? I always see phones being sold on eBay with cracked screens. Would it be worth the bother when you take into account shipping (and if you're selling on eBay, the 20% commission). If I was going to give it a go, what do you guys think would be a good phone to try it with? I wouldn't want it to be super expensive if I broke it, but it would probably need to be relatively popular so it could still be sold.
Well, the idea is good generally, but as there are many of them who deal with this already. It will be quite hard to be win the competitors. If you take it as your hobby, that can really be as it will bring you pleasure to deal with it, but if you take it as the serious business idea, then I suppose it will be really hard to improve.
There's 4 companies who do it in my local town. Very competitive area. Just depends on phone though if you can get a iPhone 4S sub £100 then redo the screen and sell it on that's decent profit. The older the phone the more hassle it is though.
On the flip side. Yes there is plenty of people doing it. And even if you have 3 other guys in your town how many coffee shops are there? Everyone has a phone in this day and age, whats your local population 40-50k? how many people break phones? LOADS! There is plenty of work to be had imo. Mrs had a letter from Orange other day there insurance now only covers theft and software faults at £12 a month. They can do one. So more people will be looking at repairing opposed to the replacement culture we have developed over the last ten years. Its a real benefit of a unified model purchasing.
There is a store in the mall downtown that keeps every broken phone/screen/whatever and displays them in clear boxes in the window. It's amazing how many they have! has to be in the thousands...
