> The point of serialization is precisely to make stolen parts unviable economically, so you’ve painted yourself into a bit of a corner there.

If every single spare-part can also be ordered new and the sum of usable components from a stolen iPhone totals to ~60USD (excluding the mainboard because it is marked as stolen and fused), it's no longer economically viable to steal an iPhone, send it to another country, disassemble it for parts, test the parts and resell them.

As of today, some parts cannot be purchased by third parties at all, so grey-market sourcing is a viable economy.

> After paying a shop to repair an iPhone with a generic screen, I believe genuine parts cost more because they are better, not due to artificial scarcity. Not only were the colors off, the battery life was less with the new screen.

In the pre-Apple world this was already solved: Manufacturers printed their logo on the spare-part, so buyers knew when they get a genuine part or not. 3rd parties are still allowed to produce parts, but faking the logo qualifies as counterfeit --> If you want an original part, ask for an original part and pay the premium

> The point of serialization is precisely to make stolen parts unviable economically, so you’ve painted yourself into a bit of a corner there.

Assuming this kind of lock is unbreakable and all the parts in the phone are locked, you mean, which is a big assumption in the long run. A side effect is that you can't reuse parts from a bricked phone in another, which increases waste without actually addressing the problem which is access to spare parts.

> I believe genuine parts cost more because they are better, not due to artificial scarcity

Price is not the only restriction, but also the number of parts you can order, having to send back the damaged one (which prevents stocking on spare parts for the future) and the exclusion of third party repair shops. In any case I acknowledged that what apple did is indeed a good step, but the repair system can be improved.