Electronics & Device Repair
The industry — Electronic and precision equipment repair and maintenance
Base industry report for 8112 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 1,545
- Under 10 employeesA
- 86%
- Establishments · USA
- 11,421
- Employment · USA
- 105,752
- Payroll · USA
- $6.8B
Of 1,545 Canadian establishments with employees, 86% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
One thing must be trueEntry turns on a single condition that can be named and tested before much is spent. Clear it and this becomes an execution question; fail it and no amount of operating skill helps.
Displace an incumbent the screen found well defended — payments attached to the workflow, data that does not leave, a contract that renews itself. Share here means giving a buyer a reason to break something that currently works, which is a higher bar than being better.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 3
The binding constraint — incumbent vulnerability
Manufacturers control parts, tools and diagnostic software, and authorised-repair programmes grant access on terms that cap what an independent can charge and do. Right-to-repair legislation is moving, slowly and unevenly, and until it lands the independent's supply of genuine parts is a permission rather than a purchase. The same structural fight is recorded at 811310 for industrial equipment.
Customers walk a device in and want it back the same day. Sized by walk-in traffic, which is a street-level variable.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
The field
Every operator named on this record, and what each one discloses. A private single-site operator discloses nothing, which is the normal case — the listed consolidators are the only window in.
Competitor set · 4 named · 0 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| The independent single-shop majorityA | not disclosed | — | 1,090 of 1,545 Canadian establishments employ one to four people. No revenue is published for any of them. |
| uBreakiFix by AsurionC | not disclosed | — | Franchised repair network operating as an authorised service provider for major handset manufacturers. Asurion is privately held and publishes no revenue; store counts and franchise terms were not researched for this record. |
| Mobile KlinikC | not disclosed | — | Canadian device-repair chain; owned by a listed telecom, and not separately disclosed. Ownership and store count were not re-verified for this record. |
| Manufacturers' authorised-service programmesC | not disclosed | — | Apple, Samsung, LG and the instrument makers. They are not competitors for the customer so much as the gatekeeper on the input. No programme's terms were opened for this record. |
Nobody here publishes revenue. The market is not sized for that reason — an estimate built on nothing would only look like knowledge.
Evidence
Evidence. No commercial anchor exists at this industry's scale and the record says so rather than padding. Nobody listed reports electronic and precision equipment repair as a segment, 1,090 of the 1,545 Canadian establishments employ one to four people, and the branded networks in the category — Asurion's uBreakiFix, Mobile Klinik — sit inside private or much larger companies that do not break them out. What was sourced instead is the constraint the screen actually turns on: the text of California's Right to Repair Act (SB 244) was read in the legislature's own bill text [A], which is where the 1 July 2024 operative date and the three- and seven-year parts-availability windows come from. Establishment, employment and payroll counts are Statistics Canada (December 2023) and US County Business Patterns (2022) [A]; the payroll-per-employee figure is arithmetic on the US table, and the inference drawn from it about the code's composition is reasoning, tiered B. No Canadian right-to-repair statute was opened, so nothing here describes Canadian law. The cut — that manufacturer control of parts leaves the independent operating on permission — is analyst judgment: UNVERIFIED.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
Right-to-repair advocacy coalition; site lists a 2026 Canadian Repair Convention. Volunteer-run Google Sites page; no member count.
Digital Right to Repair Coalition, a 501(c)(6) of repair businesses and allies; tracks state right-to-repair laws. No member count published.
Board-level laptop, TV and electronics repair forum with schematic/boardview file search; posts dated the day of check.
Device repair Q&A community; dozens of questions per day, activity dated the day of check.
Annual show for independent device-repair shops: micro-soldering competition, demos, Shop Talk Live; 2026 in Atlantic City, 2027 dates pending.
Electronics Technicians Association; vendor-neutral technician certifications. No member count published.
forum.rossmanngroup.com did not resolve and is not listed; GSM-Forum (gsmhosting) blocks automated access; r/mobilerepair could not be verified from this network.