The average American now holds onto their smartphone for 29 months, according to a recent survey by Reviews.org, and that cycle is getting longer. The average was around 22 months in 2016.
While squeezing as much life out of your device as possible may save money in the short run, especially amid widespread fears about the strength of the consumer and job market, it might cost the economy in the long run, especially when device hoarding occurs at the level of corporations.
“Companies aren’t innovating anymore and it’s costing the economy” is what it should say. When late stage capitalism leads to consolidation and cost cutting, stock buybacks, and other short term profit when competition is no longer necessary, that’s what kills the economy. That’s why monopolies and anticompetitive behaviors are bad, but the US doesn’t punish that anymore.
People are returning to normal device lifecycles and the greed can’t cope
Costing the economy… hahahahahaha
Jesus Christ what a dumb take. But at least they didn’t say that millennials are killing the cell phone industry. I guess that doesn’t make for good clickbait anymore.
Reminds me if the parable of the broken window, in which French economist Frédéric Bastiat explains the painfully-obvious truth that breaking windows is generally a bad thing, even though it drums up business for the glass maker.
But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, “Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen.”
It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.
capitalist propaganda
Oh no, we’re being so selfish. Why not buy a 10% performance upgrade every two years for $1000 while wages stagnate? Oh, and carriers don’t subsidize the cost at all anymore. They call it “free” then lock you into their most expensive plan so you spend thousands more on the plan than if you could have afforded to just buy the phone outright.
Fuck this out of touch reporting.
It’s all over the place. In the middle of the article they suddenly talk about how software updates, modularity and repairability is important so that old devices can be made to keep up with contemporary demands, blaming the fact that this is an issue on big tech.
Then again, other parts are completely nuts.
Noticing some em dashes in there, so at least some of this is AI.
The parts about corporate infrastructure sound like a c suite dipshit trying to sound like they know what they’re talking about.
“Our networks run slower because we have to be compatible with older devices!”
No, Judith, your IT department just keeps 2.4ghz wifi available for the old devices while also running 5ghz. Those devices stay slow, but it doesn’t impact anyone else.
“Back in 2010, 100Mb internet was the fastest! No one could imagine gigabit becoming widely available! Stuff needs to be upgraded to handle it!” Judy, tons of businesses were running gigabit in 2010, and common network gear has had gigabit ports for years. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Most word processors will auto-format to em dashes when they detect regular dashes in context of a sentence with a space on either side
I would have little respect for a journalist who didn’t know how to use an em-dash, so I don’t think that proves anything. But I agree that there is a lack of coherent thought throughout, though that’s something humans are also fully capable of.
But yeah, fully agree. Never mind that network connection speed is not really the relevant bottleneck for most office situations these days. If Germans are less productive due to technology it’s because they still use freaking fax machines over there, not because employees are stuck with five year old smartphones.
I don’t like to comment twice, but holy fuck … what the hell did I just read?
The framing here puts the Louvre to shame (they’ve currently got their own problems). Perhaps the purest perversion of capitalism is the idea that sufficient is never enough.
Look: Phones are commodities at this point. You only need a new one when the old one breaks. You don’t call a plumber to replace your pipes every two years; it’s generally because something shitty happens. Sometimes literally.
This feels like the pendulum swinging back, to the alarm of capital. I’m old enough to remember appliances being expected to last 20 years. Fridge, oven, TV, washer and dryer: All were expected to be single-time replacements over the course of a 30-year mortgage.
Hence growing up with a fridge in almond and a Kenmore set of laundry machines in mustard yellow. And a console Sony TV that made it through my entire console gaming time.
please continue to “device hoard” folks
Our devices don’t change all that much to be honest. And the battery degregation is the only real reason to get a new phone. Some companies are even making it easy again to fix phones again.
Plus people can’t afford 1000$ phones full stop.
At this point my phone from 2022 is way overpowered for every use case I have for it. So why upgrade? It was a bit different years ago, when new phones actually did exciting new things older phones couldn’t do. But now the technology has pretty much matured, and upgrades are incremental at best.
That’s not even 3 years, gotta get those rookie numbers up
Fr, my phone was over 3x as old when I traded it in, and it wasn’t even broken. I just knew I had to replace it in the next 4 years and didn’t want to get hit with tariffs.
2 years is a good start for people who trade in annually, though. Gotta start somewhere!
This is almost a textbook example of the broken window fallacy.
I got a new phone about a week ago. My old one was wildly overpowered for my use case, but … I accidentally sat on it briefly, and the screen was never the same. I went from a Pixel 6 Pro to a 9a, and … yeah, the screen seemed slightly smaller for a couple of days, but otherwise, it’s faster than a device twice the price in 2021.
As with computers, we’ve hit “good enough” with phones for the most part. If you know why you need GPU cycles, that of course is another story, but for basic compute, we’ve nailed it. Hell, I’d still be running my i7-3770K – a processor I bought in 2012 – had my motherboard not died.
Things get shitty in terms of margins at the top of any technological S-curve.
I spent $500 on a phone that will get nearly seven years of updates, as I didn’t buy it release day. Assuming I don’t sit on it, that’s a remaining 78 months at $6.41/month. My service is $15/month.
There’s no money here anymore.
this sounds like the housing market stuff. you want folks to spend then get them jobs that provide for food and shelter and utilities and health insurance and then enough extra to spend on stuff.
What is to upgrade? Smartphones/phablets were always going to reach a peak, where the innovations that can be made are small. Screens look amazing, cameras are incredible, it’s all at a point where phones do everything we want them to really well. Upgrades now are just iterative, battery improvements are welcome, improved camera sensors would be cool, but we dont need any of it, even faster SoCs, brighter or higher resolution screens are pointless now.
They can’t really do much more, we dont need thinner, they are worse. Folding could be a potential avenue, but it’s not there yet, they are far too fragile. There’s going to have to be some new breakthrough tech to make a lot of people buy new phones, until then, they will have to keep trying to sell AI and some other bullshit features.
