We've Reached Peak Smartphone (washingtonpost.com)

You don't really need a new smartphone. From a column on the Washington Post (may be paywalled): Sure, some of them squeeze more screen into a smaller form. The cameras keep getting better, if you look very close. And you had to live under a rock to miss the hoopla for Apple's 10th-anniversary iPhone X or the Samsung Galaxy S8. Many in the smartphone business were sure this latest crop would bring a "super cycle" of upgrades. But here's the reality: More and more of Americans have decided we don't need to upgrade every year. Or every other year. We're no longer locked into two-year contracts and phones are way sturdier than they used to be. And the new stuff just isn't that tantalizing even to me, a professional gadget guy. Holding onto our phones is better for our budgets, not to mention the environment. This just means we -- and phone makers -- need to start thinking of them more like cars. We may have reached peak smartphone. Global shipments slipped 0.1 percent in 2017 -- the first ever decline, according to research firm IDC. In the United States, smartphone shipments grew just 1.6 percent, the smallest increase ever. Back in 2015, Americans replaced their phones after 23.6 months, on average, according to research firm Kantar Worldpanel. By the end of 2017, we were holding onto them for 25.3 months.

Comments

Market saturation

[sanf780]

I believe the term that you need is "market saturation" of "good enough goods". The new devices promise more CPU and GPU power, but most people including me do not tap that power. It also does not help that recent OS versions have changed graphics, and people do not want to learn old things anew.

Re:Market saturation

[Ramze]

I think you misunderstand capitalism. There have always been products that have reached peak innovation and have become ubiquitous, cheap, and offered by many suppliers at prices very near to their cost. They are called commodities.

A great example of commodities are foods in the produce aisle. Sure, people grow and sell specialty cultivars (sometimes even with patents! -- especially the GMOs), but by and large... they're commodities.

Screws, nails, hinges, bolts, nuts, pine wood, and many other things used in construction are commodities.

The cell phone has a long way to go before it becomes a commodity unencumbered by patents, but its product life cycle will eventually be extended -- just like desktop PCs and laptops have gone from 2 year cycles to 3 year cycles... to 5 year and now 7 year cycles or longer. If/when Moore's Law prevents further die shrinks, we'll probably see some architecture changes that will keep things chugging along for a while..... and new battery technologies as well. But, sooner or later, after we've gotten the right architecture on the smallest sized chip with the best possible battery running on the fastest speed (5G or faster), and the patents run out on the hardware and the license restrictions on software are gone -- boom. Cell phone becomes a commodity with little to no change and cheap price.

What drives the market is the exchange of goods and services. People are always going to need things they can't reasonably make/grow for themselves and have time and/or money to trade for those things. Capitalism doesn't live and die by computer/cell phone technology innovations. It's been around since long before computers existed. Plenty of other things to make and improve -- lots of new areas that need innovation as well. But, even if we become hyper advanced to where everything that could be invented has been and we have no new applications for that technology... people will still need stuff & still be willing to work or trade with others for that stuff in exchange for stuff that their trading partners want in return. That's the core of capitalism.

Re:Market saturation

[zifn4b]

I don't think it's a problem as just because a smart phone has become "good enough" does not mean that there aren't plenty of other things that aren't "good enough" and worth improving upon or that we have invented everything that we need or would like to have.

This is such an American thing to say (disclaimer: I'm American). The problem with American culture is it wants "better stuff" not "better lives". Why "better stuff"? Well for the most part so you can show it off to your friends and say "wowee, don't you wish you could be me? I'm so cool." While you've managed to pull this off and everyone might admire you, you wake up every day thinking "fuck my life". This is why we are working longer hours to buy more stuff that we don't have any time to use. You've been suckered into the American commercialism/materialism trap.

You're only here for a relatively short amount of time. How much stuff do you really need to be content in life? How much time do you need? See, that's the big question. How much is your finite time here worth? What good is having a big house filled with stuff if you're slaving away at a job you hate while your stuff is collecting dust? That's the trap.

What's remarkable to me is that very few Americans ever question it and that's quite disturbing. Fight Club captured the idea quite eloquently in this scene. "The things you own, end up owning you." So chillingly true and yet another sucker falls into it every day and supports the system that mass produces the hand cuffs. I hope one day America wakes up and realizes there's more to life than expensive cars, clothes and gadgets.

Tablets too!

[drewsup]

Until the next gen memory chips start getting integrated, or some awesome nano tube tetraherz processor gets released, we have reached the more than good enough for 99 % of the population. And thank God for that, we don't need any more heaps of tech landfill as the multiple new generations of phone/tablets quickly obsolete themselves.

lifespan of OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I still find it disturbing up to this day that every phones older than a few years old gets out of support for security updates. Too many Android devices with old unpatched firmware in the wild. Iphone? 4 and a half years later and no more updates from Apple. The hardware might be robust, but manifacturers donâ(TM)t give a shit about keeping security & os updates indefinitely. Thatâ(TM)s a major problem. Thoughts?

Or

[captbollocks]

The more likely explanation is that people just don't have the disposable income they used to, in fact, it has been declining for years.

Re:Or

[apoc.famine]

Actually my (and most other Americans) disposable income has been flat and is not changing much. (We just looked at our first post-taxcut paycheck.)

See! I can do anecdotes too!

From the Tax Policy Center: The cut is estimated to be $930 this year for the middle one-fifth of taxpayers, which is about $35 a paycheck if you get paid every two weeks.

I don't know how much you get paid, but I'm not going to call an extra $30 in my paycheck a big jump in disposable income.

And I'm not going to celebrate it in any case, because come tax time, I'll likely owe way more than I ended up getting back in my paycheck anyway. Some of the other tax changes aren't going to be apparent until we get to filing next year, and it looks like some of them are going to hurt a lot of people. I really don't know what the SALT and standard deduction changes are going to mean for me personally, but initial indications are that I'm going to owe more come tax time. To the point that it might be worth upping my witholdings, and thus reducing my paycheck.

Re:Needs a new direction

[DaMattster]

As an OpenBSD enthusiast as well, I would like to see my phone run it. But, I don't think desktop OSes generally run well on mobile platforms. We've learned that time and again from Microsoft's attempts at making a square peg fit a round hole one size fits all. It would take a really superbly engineered mobile desktop environment to be added to OpenBSD for it to work.

Time for a new part to wear out

[JoeyRox]

The planned obsolescence via expensive, non-user replaceable batteries isn't working like it used to. It's time for phone makers to come up with a more expensive part to wear out, one which can't so easily be manufactured by third parties. How about they start designing the screens to get dimmer over the life of the phone, so that by the third year they're completely dark? That should do the trick to get the upgrades rolling again.

... then just stop.

[nine-times]

I agree that we've hit the point where, for most people most of the time, a phone from 3 years ago serves just as well as the brand new model. And here's the thing about that: I wish vendors would let that be.

Because what tends to happen is they stop making meaningful and useful improvements, and instead focus on cramming in useless "improvements" that make the whole thing harder to deal with. Windows 7 was good enough, and so we got Windows 8 that ruined the UI, followed by Windows 10 which keeps cramming more and more advertising into vital functions while stripping away useful controls. Every version of Windows moves has new "features" and moves around the controls, but none of them actually improve it. Meanwhile, Apple has started forcing Siri into everything and putting that touch bar at the top of the keyboard, which are also pretty useless.

Screw the gimmicks. If you can come up with a real improvement that makes things easier and more effective, great. Otherwise, just focus on refinements. Make it a little faster. Make the battery last longer. Start looking at the problems that users actually have, the annoyances and pesky bugs, and work on fixing those.

There's nothing wrong with reaching the point where the innovation has dried up. Accept it, and make continual incremental improvements and refinements.

Re:Another device is "good enough"

[ColdWetDog]

Hah. Microsoft is smarter than you are.

So, you think your machine is OK because it could run MS Office? Guess what? We moved the goal posts. Now your machine wheezes and sputters.

Think you can just keep using your old copies and licenses? Oops. Those servers. Just where did we put them?

It's really not that hard to bloat up software. Lots of companies have been perfecting this behavior for years.

Oooh! Shiny!

Re:Cameras (and software) have a loong way to go

[Archimonde]

The best camera is the one you have with you. So if you can get a good camera with your phone that is great.

Or maybe people just don't like the new phones?

[green1]

With each generation of phone, more and more features are removed. Why would someone willingly downgrade to a new phone?

My Note 4 has:
- a wider screen than any available today
- a user replaceable battery (I'm on #3)
- an IR transmitter
- an easy to hold faux-leather back that isn't slippery
- a headphone jack
- HDMI output (via MHL)
- an SD card slot

Almost all new phones get rid of the majority of that list (if not all of it).

It's not that people don't want to UPGRADE, it's that people are sick of seeing the newer phones as a DOWNGRADE from where they already are!