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.
Reduce the amount of disposable income across the board, then start moaning that people arent buying shit they dont need as much… The utter fucking state of these people.
Americans are increasingly opting for reusable cups. This is costing the plastic cup industry billions.
And how exactly is this bad?
Spending less money on stupid stuff isn’t hurting the economy, for fuck’s sake.
The exact same applies to smartphones.
Why do even 50% of people need wifi7? BT 5.3? 1TB SSD? They don’t care, they got what they want and the need limits was a long time ago. Also give everyone $800+ to go buy a new phone?
Want to convince me to buy a new phone? Battery with a weeks long charge. I’ll drop $1500 but then won’t replace it for 5-7 years.
Good. Better for your pocketbook, better for yourself, and better for the world.
I would like to note that the difference in relative purchases of technology investments between consumer and business markets will make comparison a little less than easy.
That and certain social demographics within the information technology world present a bleed through of practices in spending habits and thus should not be included.
I brought my s24 exactly because it’s got 7yrs of updates. I suspect it’ll need a new battery around 4yrs. If I’m lucky, that will let me hold out until Linux phones are more polished
Ditto, and mainly for the stated continuing security updates, my old note 8 is still working and in fine condition.
NO, it’s costing some companies. The economy benefits from cutting out waste. It just so happens that the stock market and “the economy” are not synonyms.
I’ll be using my 1TB iPhone 15 Pro for far more than 2 years. LOL
If the economy depends in us buying new phones every two years, then maybe the economy wasn’t as strong as we thought it was.
Oh no! Not the economy 😭
The economy can go fuck itself. I’d rather have a society and an ecology.
Who the fuck decided to predicate the economy on a <2-year upgrade cycle for electronics?! Tim Apple is that you?
29 months is “as much as possible”? My phone is from 2016 and it works fine!
That impressive really
And i boast about my 2019 phone that still works fine.
Not constantly throwing away things that are still good is “device hoarding” now? Strong “quiet quitting” vibes there.
This whole thing reads like satire.
And not like the whole semiconductor industry is one of the most environmentally toxic ones. Better keep your phone/computer as long as possible.
