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.
Where’s that cartoon about financial news stories making much more sense if you replace the words “the economy” with “rich people’s boat money”?
Fuck this shit. Pay us more.
Proper headline: Economy sucks, inflation is higher than ever, so people have to hold onto their devices longer.
But you guys not buying new phones is reducing productivity by a third of a percent! Think of the potential losses!
Only 29 months?! That’s a bit wasteful unless it’s being handed down…
Maybe the economy shouldn’t be so dependent upon disposable devices.
Yeah, my reaction was less about economics and more wondering why this wouldn’t be celebrated.
Perhaps it’s all the cell carriers moving from 24 month device payment plans to 36 month terms. Flagship devices have become so costly that to keep the monthly device payment plan price the same the term needed to be extended.
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.
This comment could have be a vote.
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.
OnePlus 5 here! There is a sucking void attached internally where the battery used to be.
I’m posting this from a 7 year old device.
7 year old device gang (Galaxy S9+)
S10 waits our turn to take up the flag.
Balls to that. You can pry my old devices from my cold dead hands.
That collar round your neck? Silicon Valley. They are the overseers. The technocrats are kings, and your friends and family won’t think another second about it. You lost privacy. Your lives are surveilled and sold on the market. Your splitting hairs over minutia and stupid fights over anything but regaining civilian autonomy over your life and data pleases them. More distractions are coming everyday in the distribution channels they control.
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…
Yup got that too. Flipped it to Bazzite, and setting up an old laptop on Mint now too.
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”.
Maybe don’t base the economy on e-waste?
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…
Good old French engineering. Calculations say we need at least a 9mm bolt to hold on this widget, every other bolt on the car is 10mm or 16mm. 9mm bolt it is.
There’s something weirdly seductive about French cars though, they somehow manage to be extremely good at some specific niche feature and look nice and be just quality enough that you seem to talk yourself round to them.
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.
