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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.
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.
Maybe don’t base the economy on e-waste?
What kind of twatwaffle writes this crap. Fuck your planned obsolescence.
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 We're getting past the stage where it's a piece of outdated crap after 6 months and the improvements now are incremental.
A new phone can cost over $1000 and the old one still works
I know, and I can't believe they sell......No way i'm gonna pay that much for a phone !
"The economy" is code for rich people's profits.
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.
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?
Then the "economy" should make more repair shops and sell more replacement items if it can't convince people to throw away still useful items anymore.
Sounds like phone companies need to innovate a bit more to me. Why the hell would anyone blame consumers for deciding that they don't need to replace something if the replacement is almost the exact same?
So more AI? Heard.
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.
Man. What a shitty headline. This is actually impressive.
This is a good thing and CNBC centers on the poor shareholders. Reduction of ewaste in this small area is positive.
Good, fuck the economy
They already did, that's the problem. If they want more consumer spending they need to fix the wealth gap, but they don't want to do that. They want to keep the pump running that transfers wealth from the poor to the rich but it's starting to stall and they're panicking, hence pieces like this.
Maybe if more of "the economy" went into the pockets of consumers they'd have money to buy phones as often as they used to.
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.
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.
wHy ArE mIlLeNnIaLs DeStRoYiNg ThE pRiCe Of ____?!#1
Because we don't have any fucking money, idiot.
...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!"
Proper headline: Economy sucks, inflation is higher than ever, so people have to hold onto their devices longer.
God forbid we sacrifice one-third of a percent of productivity to reduce our impact on nature.
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.
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”?
Oh no, the economy!
I'm still rockin' my Galaxy S10 and the desktop I built in 2016. Both meet my needs just fine right now.
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
"The economy" can once again be replaced with "rich people's yacht money"
The phone contracts are now all 24 or 36 months I stead of 18/24. Hence the average goes up
Won’t somebody please think of the economy?!?
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.
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.
Balls to that. You can pry my old devices from my cold dead hands.
