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.
Research released by the Federal Reserve last month concludes that each additional year companies delay upgrading equipment results in a productivity decline of about one-third of a percent, with investment patterns accounting for approximately 55% of productivity gaps between advanced economies. The good news: businesses in the U.S. are generally quicker to reinvest in replacing aging equipment. The Federal Reserve report shows that if European productivity had matched U.S. investment patterns starting in 2000, the productivity gap between the U.S and European economic heavyweights would have been reduced by 29 percent for the U.K., 35 percent for France, and 101% for Germany.
Maybe the economy shouldn’t be so dependent upon disposable devices.
This article is framed from a capitalist CEO, and while it touches on reality, feels incredibly lost in it’s point.
Cassandra Cummings, CEO of New Jersey-based electronics design company Thomas Instrumentation. …
Both the cellular and internet infrastructure has to operate to be backwards compatible in order to support the older, slower devices. Networks often have to throttle back their speeds in order to accommodate the slowest device
I’d Boohoo, if they actually were thinking about rebuilding the network stack to consider something like MultiPathTCP and reframed the devices to actually use all the networks they were on rather than a single one… But no they want you to by a single provider and depend on that plan… For the economy.
Further Telecoms choose not to upgrade towers (to save costs). In 2023, AT&T/Verizon spent $10B less on network upgrades than projected. Because they were being profit-driven underinvestment.
She does go on to say:
To ease the transition to new technologies, she says there should be designs that are repairable or modular rather than the constant purge and replace cycles. “So perhaps future devices can have a partial upgrade in say ethernet communications rather than forcing someone to purchase an entirely new computer or device,” Cummings said. “I’m not a fan of the throw-away culture we have these days. It may help the economy to spend more and force upgrades, but does it really help people who are already struggling to pay bills?” she said.
So slightly redeeming.
The article also makes note of repairing:
He adds that when people hold onto their phones or laptops for five or six years, the repair and refurbishment market becomes an active part of the economy. But right now, in both European, American, and global markets, too much of that happens in the shadows.
But this attempt to point out that productivity is lost on old devices:
The price to the organization is then paid in lack of productivity, inability to multitask and innovate, and needless, additional hours of work that stack up. Workplace research conducted by Diversified last year found that 24% of employees work late or overtime due to aging technology issues, while 88% of employees report that inadequate workplace technology stifles innovation. Kornweiss says he doesn’t expect there’s been any improvement in those numbers over the past year.
There’s a disconnect between the numbers and behavior. Many workers report that aging devices stifle productivity, but like a favorite pair of shoes or an old sweater, they don’t want to give them up to learn the intricacies of a new device (which they’ll learn and then have to replace with another). Familiarity can trump productivity for many workers. But the result of that IT clinginess is felt in the bottom line.
Fails to point out the waste of resources and it’s impact on climate, health, and the economy; loss of privacy and it’s impact on democracy, health, and yes the economy; and also how often new things don’t actually help productivity…
Some how the “Upgrade to help the economy” falls flat when you consider Windows 11 and it’s non-upgrade upgrade. Or MS Office which is still producing Word/Excel/PowerPoint/etc decades later with the same shortcuts. Your ‘productivity lag’ is your boss refusing to train you not your laptop
I mean if upgrade = economy, why does Apple sit on $165B in cash? They should spend it — not you!
Profit-driven innovation that wants to sell us the same iPhone with a new camera, is not helping the economy. We need real innovation that disrupts big tech as much as it disrupts everything.
Oh and that ‘business equipment investment’ from the fed was about factory robots and large capital investments, not phones.
This is a good comment.
Balls to that. You can pry my old devices from my cold dead hands.
wHy ArE mIlLeNnIaLs DeStRoYiNg ThE pRiCe Of ____?!#1
Because we don’t have any fucking money, idiot.
29 months?! I don’t get rid of my device until it doesn’t hold a charge for longer than 10 minutes and no longer has security updates provided…My last phone was 7 years old.
I’m posting this from a 7 year old device.
7 year old device gang (Galaxy S9+)
This is utter bullshit. I’ve not bought a new phone in 7 years and even then the economic damage causes by my purchasing habits in those 7 years is an insignificant spec in the face of the economic damages wrought by the single Walmart in my home town each month.
One of the things the article says is that “most people want newer phones” (if they could afford it). Do y’all feel that way?
I think I wouldn’t switch my 4 year old device even if someone gave me a new one for free. Just the hassle of changing to a new phone is not worth it when the new phone isn’t that much better. I’m just so over “tech”. I don’t have that excitement of new gadgets anymore.
Same. I haven’t seen what I would call a new feature (or at least one worth a shit) in a decade. What the hell do I need 5 cameras for? Plus, the obsession with making devices thinner is so annoying. I’m still mad they took away my headphone jack.
Maybe don’t base the economy on e-waste?
The economic outlook is nobody having jobs and a bunch of racist sexist pedofile trillionares saying they own everything because of corruption. It’s pretty clear the consumer based economy is being dissolved for a new debt based feudal system where everything is owned and you’re allowed to live as a debtor slave or live in a for profit prison or die.
Holy shit keeping a device longer than 2 years is “device hoarding” now? Thats fucking nuts.
How do you invest so much money in a device like that and not make it last? I’ve got one phone I use for work calls thats 10 years old. People are still shocked I dont even have a case on it.
This is blaming consumers for companies not doing a better job at planned obsolescence.
When every single business is slowly getting to the point where they need you to be a consumer whore just to survive, yes.
My last phone up until a couple months ago was from 2017, apparently I am just a mega hoarder. Don’t look at the pile of miscellaneous bits of tech, the Omnisiah demands I collect the shinnies.
Honestly, if I could just upgrade the CPU and replace the battery every once in a while, is still be using a Note 3 or nexus 5. Those first few generations of notes were awesome.
…hands up anyone using laptops or desktops older than 15 years?.. …right here, bitches…lol…
I got laptops from 2008 and 2013, still work just fine 😁
It’s because economists haven’t got the memo yet that informs them that smartphones have been recategorized as, “durable goods”.
What kind of twatwaffle writes this crap. Fuck your planned obsolescence.
…i believe only one country has “planned obsolescence” as an illegal business practice…
Bhutan?
After a quick search, it seems to be France. I wouldn’t have guessed that in a thousand years, judging their car industry…
Stellantis in shambles, or at least their manufacturing quality is
Lol shots fired.
Accurate, correct shots…
…so the joke goes… A woman comes into the store where she bought a toaster 45 years previous, she wishes to compliment the company for its many years of use and get a new toaster. The salesman is beside himself and calls his supervisor. The supervisor is also surprised and calls his boss in regional sales. Eventually, the woman is sent to the President of the company where she is thanked for her continues patronage, and is given a new toaster. The President of the company takes the old toaster to his Research and Development Department, and tells them, “Find out how this lasted so long and make sure it NEVER happens again!”
The most hilarious thing about this is that a toaster, being little more than a spring-loaded tray and heating elements, should last for decades to come. But they don’t, because profits.
“The economy” is code for rich people’s profits.
You know shit’s bad when US media starts using the ‘China bad’ classic “but at what cost?” byline toward US consumers
Im guessing there’s a sister article somewhere on Forbes reporting lower than anticipated earnings for US phone manufacturers
What are they even trying to say with the whole thing about Europe vs the US? If Europe had used their devices for shorter lengths of time, ie higher capital amounts spent on tech replacements, then they would have had higher productivity?
But that necessitates a level of investment that doesnt exist. Its like saying “if investments in the Congo were on parity with the US they would have increased productivity by 2 million percent”. Which is neither guaranteed to be true, as there are limitations in a smaller country, plus fairly useless to even say as there are limits on what is reasonably investable in the Congo without more risk than reward. Its literally useless econobabble arguing in favor of hypotheticals that make no sense on paper
Even the tech investments that occur already in the US make no sense on paper, consumer nor commercial. People dont need a new iphone every year. I get 5 years out of mine on average
Maybe I’m old but it feels like the days of meaningful improvements have passed. Now it’s just a slightly different design for the sake of the annual release schedule. Why change when this 4 year old device is still supported and functions just fine?
Phones are where PCs were ~20 years ago. We’re getting past the stage where it’s a piece of outdated crap after 6 months and the improvements now are incremental.
This is it, really. I used to upgrade every year or two and flash the latest and greatest ROM to be on the bleeding edge.
Now, none of that really seems like a huge difference anymore other than GrapheneOS for privacy and security.
It’s just incremental improvements and none of the reparability I want, so I wait until it’s really necessary to upgrade now.
I have a 6 year old iphone. And the literal only enticing feature of the new ones is that the base models have 4x the storage space lol
Mine is now 3.5 years old. I bought a new flagship model with the idea it’d last a long time. Only now are new ‘features’ and updates coming out on new models, and even those are minor. Plus mine still has company support.
