Hot take: it takes mental gymnastics to think that planned obsolescence is not fraud.
Depends how its planned. If its planned to fail but designed in a way thats cheap and easy to replace its ok. Because sometimes it can be the case that to much is spent over engineering a high use part when would be more practical to let it break and replace it every 2 years or so.
Sure, if it's truly planned. I think the tricky part tends to be that it's hard to distinguish between "planned obsolescence" and "incidental obsolescence".
Is there a bright line between cost reduction and planned obsolescence?
Obviously a small unreplaceable battery is not a good example for that discussion.
It's consumer fraud. It's shareholder fraud. It's environmental fraud.
Products like this simply shouldn't be allowed on the market. As if we need to destroy the planet so my Mother can enjoy looking at her 401k balance in the morning.
I personally like to call it "forced obsolescence."
Forced obsolescence is when the consumer always buys the cheapest product that checks their boxes, regardless of build quality. This forces you to either use cheap parts that you know will break, or leave the market entirely. The consumer may bitch at "planned obsolescence", but when push comes to shove and they're looking for what their next <thing> is going to be, they only look at the price and features, not quality and longevity.
We should be re-framing this in consumer's minds, and list "price divided by warranty" as an important dimension to evaluate a product on.