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.
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.
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.
When every single business is slowly getting to the point where they need you to be a consumer whore just to survive, yes.
It’s because economists haven’t got the memo yet that informs them that smartphones have been recategorized as, “durable goods”.
Yeah, fuck that. I’ll keep my device as long as possible because of course I would! Try for five years.
“Hording”… The fucking nerve to say that… I am actually offended. Whatever happened to “recycle, reduce, reuse”? What could possible be more irresponsible than constantly replacing your devices?
Maybe don’t base the economy on e-waste?
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Sacrifice yourselves for the economy
And the planet.
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?
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
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.
Maybe the economy shouldn’t be so dependent upon disposable devices.
“The economy” can once again be replaced with “rich people’s yacht money”
Yeah, no shit. No one wants to buy a new $1200 phone that does the exact same shit as the last $1200 phone.
Phones peaked around 2012. Now they are more cameras. If they had user replaceable batteries like 20 years ago no one would need to replace them.
Institutions and businesses need to stop the 2 year cycle on phones.
Phones peaked around 2012. Now they are more cameras.
Folding phones only came out about 5 years ago, but I bought it used and true to the article my current folding phone is over 24 months with no plans on it being replaced.
I’m all for replaceable batt but it is usually at the expense of being more costly and/or less water proof.
They could’ve also said CEOs are hoarding more wealth than ever and it’s costing the economy.
Also, phone manufacturers, for one, took my headphone jack, removable storage, removable battery, crammed in more crapware, made rooting even harder, and keep aggravating my RSI with bigger and bigger screens. Why the hell would I look forward to an upgrade?
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.
Omg the poor economy, how could those selfish Americans do that
Proper headline: Economy sucks, inflation is higher than ever, so people have to hold onto their devices longer.
I remember in the 00’s when you’d upgrade your phone every year because the service providers would give you a new phone. And it would be leaps and bounds better than your previous phone with tons of new features.
Now, Samsung wants to kvetch because I won’t spend $1,500 on their new whatever that is functionally identical to the one I have from 2020? Feh! Rot!
Edit: Come to think of it, my old phone has more features than the new one since they got rid of the stylus. Maybe one day they’ll figure out “AI” isn’t a feature, it’s bloatware.
device hoarding
That is not what this is called.
Consumers are being Anticapitalist! This is not a recession! We didn’t fire half the country for people to spend less!! Think about our growing profits!!
“A population with skyrocketing costs of living and stagnant wages cutting unnecessary spending, and that’s a problem”
Fuck the economy. It can eat my ass.
Also with moore’s law’s death, why the fuck would anybody believe this productivity bullshit? Any device from 5 years ago can do what a device today can.
One more thing, wtf is this entitlement from electronics importers. Apple, google, samsung, etc can all fuck off until they move manufacturing back to north america.
