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Your Love of Your Old Smartphone Is a Problem for Apple and Samsung (wsj.com)
The smartphone industry has a culprit to blame for slumping sales: Its old devices remain too popular. From a report: Flashy phones of yesteryear, particularly Apple's iPhones and Samsung's Galaxy S handsets, are getting refurbished, and U.S. consumers are snapping them up. Many shoppers are balking at price tags for new phones pushing $1,000, and improvements on latest launches in many cases haven't impressed [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. As more people hold on to devices longer, new smartphone shipments plunged to historic lows at the end of 2017. "Smartphones now resemble the car industry very closely," said Sean Cleland, director of mobile at B-Stock Solutions, the world's largest platform for trade-in and overstock phones, based in Redwood City, Calif. "I still want to drive a Mercedes, but I'll wait a couple of years to buy the older model. Same mentality." Another trend borrowed from the car industry that has helped consumers get around sticker shock: leasing. Instead of buying new phones, Sprint and T-Mobile allow subscribers to effectively lease them, allowing them to trade up for the latest device. That option, though, hasn't yet gone mainstream.
[...] Second-hand phones long found their way to Africa, India and other developing markets. But now, U.S. buyers represent 93% of the purchases made at second-hand phone online auctions run by B-Stock, compared with an about-even split between the U.S. and the rest of the world in 2013. Samsung and Apple together sell more than one out of every three phones globally and capture about 95% of the industry's profits. U.S. consumers, spurred by two-year carrier contracts and phone subsidies, were upgrading every 23 months as recently as 2014, according to BayStreet Research, which tracks device sales. Now, people are holding onto their phones for an extra eight months. By next year, the time gap is estimated to widen to 33 months, BayStreet says.
[...] Second-hand phones long found their way to Africa, India and other developing markets. But now, U.S. buyers represent 93% of the purchases made at second-hand phone online auctions run by B-Stock, compared with an about-even split between the U.S. and the rest of the world in 2013. Samsung and Apple together sell more than one out of every three phones globally and capture about 95% of the industry's profits. U.S. consumers, spurred by two-year carrier contracts and phone subsidies, were upgrading every 23 months as recently as 2014, according to BayStreet Research, which tracks device sales. Now, people are holding onto their phones for an extra eight months. By next year, the time gap is estimated to widen to 33 months, BayStreet says.
Want to sell your new model for $1,000? For me it's simple. Put back the audio jack, make it a bit thicker and stronger. Add the capability to routinely swap micro-SD cards and I'll gladly pay $1,200. I feel like the new smart phones are still trying to market sexy styling ahead of swiss army knife capability...much like cars.
They could release OS updates, that intentionally degraded performance of old phones, and when caught they could just claim that they did it to help out people with old batteries?
Naw... too far fetched.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I have an iPhone 6 Plus, which will soon be 4 years old. It works fine. (I expect it will work better when I get the update that will stop throttling me.)
I recently cracked the screen, and I see that I can order the parts to do the screen and the battery at once for less than 1/5 the cost of a latest/greatest iPhone. I'll be doing that.
The phone companies' problems are now that they can't push new features that make the phones better in any really meaningful way. They're at the point laptops reached 10 years ago, where unless it actually breaks, you can use it in perpetuity.
They need to innovate if they want people to buy, but they just aren't doing so. And part of it is that we have everything we currently need. My 4 year old phone does everything I need it to do. I'd probably have a little fun with some new features, but I'm not doling out $1000 for negligible benefit. (Not to mention to downgrade to the headphone adapter but that's a different rent).
You want people to spend money? Give them something they want, instead of something they already have.