The interesting journey of an uninteresting component

Manufacturing and Assembly

You’re probably thinking this is obvious, right? But it has to start somewhere and, for a charging port, we start overseas. Now, iPhones have over 170 components in them and they’re manufactured by several different countries, from Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong and South Korea to Finland, Singapore, The Netherlands, The United States and more. The charging ports can be manufactured in any one of these countries waiting to be picked for the next assembly run. For our little charging port, it was manufactured in Hong Kong. From here, it’s time for Apple to buy these components for the iPhone XR and they’ll select from over 200 suppliers from around the world. But ultimately, the parts end up in one place.

Whether they’re freighted by sky or sea, iPhone components are assembled at Foxconn in Taiwan. For our 5cm charging port, it travelled from Hong Kong, that’s over 400 miles! But, what’s next?

Distribution to Retail

Our charging port has been assembled into its new home, a shiny iPhone XR, thanks to Foxconn, it’s time to distribute them across the world. First, it makes its way back to Zhengzhou, China (that’s an easy 800 miles) where the phones are shipped across the world using FedEx, UPS and other carriers. On this occasion, our charging port was destined for the USA, that’s a whopping 7,100 miles! Already, our charging port has travelled several thousand miles to three different countries, but now at least, it’s on US soil.

From here, it makes smaller trips from customs to distribution centers. From the distribution centre in the USA, it was sold to a retailer where it rests on a shelf waiting for a customer to make a purchase.

In the hands of a consumer

For the next couple of years, our charging ports journey will be varied and wild, it will visit many different places, from homes, cafes, clubs, parties, parks and workplaces. It’ll clock hundreds, or even thousands of mileage on foot, car, train and bus and it will have the time of its life.

Not all great things last however, eventually it’s owner will want or need a new phone and then the charging port will enter the next stage of its existence.

Is this the end?

For some, it may be, it could be locked away in a cupboard by its owner for many years, forgotten and discarded, but our charging ports’ journey continues.

The phone is sold to a phone buyback company and they in turn, re-sold it to a breaker, in our case, this is where our charging port ended up. Here, the phone is disassembled and eventually sold to a broker in the UK. The charging port, now only residing in the iPhone XR back housing, makes an eye-watering 4,200-mile trip to the UK.

Now, this is where we come in, we purchase a huge batch of these back housings from the broker where we could either sell it to another customer and its life will begin again in a new home. Or, we’ll sell to a repair shop who has a customer waiting for it or perhaps we’ll sell to an insurance company. In this particular journey, we sold them to another UK-based reseller who stripped the housings and sold the charging port as a replacement part to a customer.

The cycle continues

So, off goes this little charging port, to begin a new life in another iPhone XR, where it’ll have all the adventures it had when it was in the United States. Eventually, it’ll end up in the hands of a phone buy back company and this cycle will go round and round again and maybe even end up back in our warehouse.

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