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.
I had my phone for 8 years until one day it bricked. That’s the only reason i got a new one about a year ago. My wife is coming up on the two year mark and is asking for a new one and i have to keep reminding her that hers is fine.
The Galaxy S3 was the best phone they ever made. SD card, removable battery, built in IR blaster… it pains me that I can’t still use it.
Only two years? Seriously?
Why? It’s not the early days of Android anymore, even 5-year-old devices still get updates these days. How are people affording to drop $1K on a new phone every two years? Or maybe the problem is that they’re buying shitty cheap low-end phones that were obsolete out of the box. If you buy a good, used, last gen flagship, it’ll last you many years.
They’re getting trade-in value for their old phone, hiding part of the remainder in a carrier contract, and getting loans for the rest. It’s only $1k if you’re one of those weirdos who likes to own things.
“The economy” can once again be replaced with “rich people’s yacht money”
Oh I’m sorry AI can’t buy devices, pay us bitches
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”?
This sounds a lot like something Richard Denniss would say. He wrote a book named Econobabble that explains a lot of this sort of thing.
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!
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.
Only 29 months?! That’s a bit wasteful unless it’s being handed down…
Yeah. I’ve used two phones over the last 11 years, no need to waste money on getting the newest one every couple of years.
Why are we always expected to change our behavior to benefit the economy? I need to buy more? The economy is all made up why can’t it change to meet the needs of the people?
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.
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.
When you have some free time, you might find it interesting to read about Edward Bernays.
This is blaming consumers for companies not doing a better job at planned obsolescence.
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.
When every single business is slowly getting to the point where they need you to be a consumer whore just to survive, yes.
…hands up anyone using laptops or desktops older than 15 years?.. …right here, bitches…lol…
I’ve got a “refurbished” Dell laptop that’s about 15yrs old. Some ex-corp model. 4C/8T, 16" 1900x1200-ish display, Nvidia GPU, 20G RAM, and it’s still going strong except for the battery which stopped holding a charge. I could get a new battery but I use the system rarely and just for browsing/email so running it off the AC brick is fine. It’s been running Linux Mint for as long as I can remember. My phone is a cheapo model from 2021 and it is also fine. The only reason I might replace it is if the battery tanks like with my other phones (planned obsolescence) or if I finally decide it’s mandatory to up my security/privacy game and need a phone that runs GrapheneOS, which means a Pixel. An old used one.
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?
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.
