Warranty Week has made its annual assessment of the costs of the electronics business. It’s quite extensive, so if you are especially interested, we recommend a read here.
However, there were a couple of highlights.
Figure 5
All U.S.-based High-Tech Companies
Average Warranty Claims & Accrual Rates
(as a % of product sales, 2003-2016)
The publication divides companies between OEMs that supply finished equipment and ‘suppliers’ that provide components to those OEMs or other suppliers. Warranty costs have generally gone down over the longer term, but there is still a gap between the costs of those that supply end users via sales channels and those that supply other companies. Channel partners tend not to be so effective at keeping costs down from issues such as no fault found costs. OEMs saw costs flat from last year, but accruals have gone up, which suggests that they might be expecting a rise in costs.
Looking at computer peripheral makers, the reports sees costs pretty steady at around 1.5% over the long term.
