[Off-topic] harlaquin:
Hum ... maybe you are right but maybe you are wrong. let me tell you my opinion of why I think you are wrong.

You say that all these returned devices that people jack up dont affect the market but somehow help the numbers?

OK I myself and most other people I know, if you go into a best buy lets say for the sake of argument and they have 2 tablets on the self One is brand new never been owned sealed up at 299.99. and the other is 10% off (I thinkthat is thier standard drop for open box) open box buy. what one are you gonna chose? knowing what people do with these things I dont know about you but to me the 30 bucks savings isnt worth the hassle of returning it when it doesnt work or to find out someone monkeyed with it. And i feel i am not alone and why there are so many open box buys sitting around on shelves.

Walmart doesnt restock returned tablets or phones doesnt matter if they are working or not they return everything to the manufacturer.

Manufacturers by law cannot resell a used item as new it has to be listed as refurbished.

so where do all these refurbished tablets go??? I dont see them. does anyone here have one? No they go to sleasy civic center electronics shows for resell at nearkly full retail and who buys them? no one at that pric people would rather have a new one. not to mention by the time the refubished junk makes its rounds to be resold its outdated and everyone wants the new thing.

Dont believe me there are stil factory refubished sega dreamcasts for sale on the internet... thats like form what 12 years ago.

all this material sitting arund DOES affect the prices we pay manufactures cant have 300 million in feurbished items sitting arund unsold with out it affecting its bottom line. so who pays for it... we do with higher prices.

also with that many items comming in defective they know which ones were hacked and messed up and which ones where manufacturing defects. when you get 100's of millions in loses do to people messing around with and screwing up your product YES you will lock it down more to make it harder.

Lets put this into a laymans terms.. lets say you own and run a chair store yes all you make are chairs. this month you made 100 chairs. well lets say 50 of them came back for refunds because people used them as something to stand on and broke them. so now your company is running at a greater then 60% loss. not only are you out the retail money for the chairs, your out the labor, the material, and the cost of now doing something with all the broken chairs. whicj included fixing them and then resellig them on a secondary market for less then the original retail. at this point your out a wad of cash and no body wants to buy your once broken chairs.

OK so now how do you go about correcting the problem you have keep people from breaking your chairs so you get less returns and there fore have a better bottom line so now you have to buy stornger wood, stronger glue, and make a more robust chair that people cant break.

all of this drives your costs up and profits down so what do you do?? Thats right you increase the cost of the chair.

You maybe right I dont think I have any idea how a market works.