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Repair Culture, India

On the last night of my most recent trip to India spent an evening trying to understand India's informal mobile phone repair culture by visiting Karol Bagh Market. Throw in the noise, heat and smells of Delhi and you already have a rich consumer experience.

As in China many of the mobile phone shops and street kiosks offer mobile phone repair service. Many of these guys can strip and rebuild a mobile phone in minutes. How do these kind of services affect the mobile phone user experience? What happens when everyone has affordable access to these kind of services?

Side-note: a lot of the hyperbole surrounding western hacker culture makes me smile compared to what these guys are doing day in day out.

Writing from Tokyo | July 3, 2005 | Permalink