Manufacturers want to give consumers a device that meets consumers’ purchasing requirements better than their competitors’ products do.
They only want us to be able to repair our phones inasmuch as consumers will buy more easily repairable phones instead of more tightly sealed phones, which is absolutely not the case. Sealed phones consistently sell waaay more than non-sealed phones, likely because they can be slightly thinner with marginally larger batteries. Every once in a while an OEM will release a phone that has a hot-swappable battery, but nobody outside of niche online electronics communities cares.
What I’m debating is the idea that there’s some nefarious conspiracy to withhold hot-swappable batteries from consumers to force them to upgrade their phones. That’s ridiculous. OEMs make sealed phones instead of easily disassemblable phones because consumers buy sealed phones instead of disassemblable ones when given the choice.
And it’s not that hard to figure out why, honestly. Personally, I would rather take my phone to an Apple Store and have them swap the battery for what I can be certain is an OEM replacement for $90 than spend $50 on eBay on a probably fake battery, take time out of my day to swap it myself, and assume the liability in the event of an improper seal. And consumer purchasing patterns show that I’m in the company of the majority of phone buyers in the US.