Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the economy

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨alyaza@beehaw.org⁩ to ⁨technology@beehaw.org⁩

http://cnbc.com/2025/11/23/how-device-hoarding-by-americans-is-costing-economy.html

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.

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sirico@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
People are returning to normal device lifecycles and the greed can’t cope

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Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Oh no, we’re being so selfish. Why not buy a 10% performance upgrade every two years for $1000 while wages stagnate? Oh, and carriers don’t subsidize the cost at all anymore. They call it “free” then lock you into their most expensive plan so you spend thousands more on the plan than if you could have afforded to just buy the phone outright.

Fuck this out of touch reporting.

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- cabbage@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It’s all over the place. In the middle of the article they suddenly talk about how software updates, modularity and repairability is important so that old devices can be made to keep up with contemporary demands, blaming the fact that this is an issue on big tech.
  
  Then again, other parts are completely nuts.
  
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  - Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Noticing some em dashes in there, so at least some of this is AI.
    
    The parts about corporate infrastructure sound like a c suite dipshit trying to sound like they know what they’re talking about.
    
    “Our networks run slower because we have to be compatible with older devices!”
    
    No, Judith, your IT department just keeps 2.4ghz wifi available for the old devices while also running 5ghz. Those devices stay slow, but it doesn’t impact anyone else.
    
    “Back in 2010, 100Mb internet was the fastest! No one could imagine gigabit becoming widely available! Stuff needs to be upgraded to handle it!” Judy, tons of businesses were running gigabit in 2010, and common network gear has had gigabit ports for years. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
    
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- dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Hold on, you can simply tack on 10-50 dollars to your cell plan and get a “free” upgrade every year instead!
  
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SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Oh look, it’s the consumers who threaten the economy, not the fucking ghouls in the C suite, killing jobs and cutting wages. How dare they not having enough money? How DARE they?

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- gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’d argue it’s actually more the fault of the politicians than the CEOs, because the politicians cut taxes for the rich and set the rules of the game for companies to operate it; companies merely take opportunity of the exploits presented to them.
  
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  - SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Not every company is publicly traded, so no shareholders, and not every CEO has to be an asshole. Sure, the laws should be better, but they are not. And here it’s not a politician who cries about loss of sales.
    
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GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Jesus Christ what a dumb take. But at least they didn’t say that millennials are killing the cell phone industry. I guess that doesn’t make for good clickbait anymore.

Reminds me if the parable of the broken window, in which French economist Frédéric Bastiat explains the painfully-obvious truth breaking windows is generally a bad thing, even though it drums up business for the glass maker.

But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, “Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen.”

It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.

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- TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The oldest millennials are in their 40s. They've moved on to talking shit about zoomers. It's kind of weird seeing everything repeat itself like that as I get older.
  
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  - SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Nah, I’m collecting recipes for billionaire bacon.
    
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- gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I like the analogy with a surgeon or a firefighter.
  
  Of course, the surgeon has to be available in case somebody needs an operation. But the best that can happen to society at large is that the surgeon is never needed because nobody’s sick.
  
  Same with firefighters. Of course they have to be there to fight fires, but it’s better if houses don’t start to burn down in the first place!
  
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irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
“Companies aren’t innovating anymore and it’s costing the economy” is what it should say. When late stage capitalism leads to consolidation and cost cutting, stock buybacks, and other short term profit when competition is no longer necessary, that’s what kills the economy. That’s why monopolies and anticompetitive behaviors are bad.

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- SparroHawc@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Don’t forget aggressive rent-seeking behavior.
  
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- gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  “Companies aren’t innovating anymore and it’s costing the economy”
  
  companies aren’t innovating anymore because physical limits have been reached. Moore’s law holds no longer true. Transistors can’t be packed more tightly into space anymore while also making the computer chip cheaper at the same time.
  
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  - irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There’s lots of things that could be innovated without faster processors. I mean if we’re just talking cell phones, adding a camera was an innovation, adding a touch screen and eventually touch keyboards that actually worked. These things were aided by faster processors, but not directly dependent on them. But these could be totally unrelated devices to phones or even computing at all. Innovation across the board including med-tech, business models, city planning, and tons of other industries have suffered from privatization, deregulation, and leading then to consolidation and thus little need to compete and thus little need to innovate.
    
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  - t3rmit3@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Packing more transistors into the same space is not the same as “innovation”. There’s more innovation in late-90s-early-2000s handheld Windows CE 3.0 devices than there are between modern smartphone designs.
    
    Take
    
    these
    
    for
    
    example.
    
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alyaza@beehaw.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
please continue to “device hoard” folks

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teawrecks@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

While it may seem to be a smart money move, it can result in a costly productivity and innovation lag for the economy.

For the love of god! Won’t somebody think of the economy?!

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- TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Another example of “the economy” meaning the ultra wealthy’s bank accounts.
  
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Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Why would that hurt the economy? If you want people to spend money, make things affordable and useful. They make things shittier and more expensive and then wonder why people aren’t buying

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- Powderhorn@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Whoa, whoa, whoa … expecting utility out of a product? That’s socialism!
  
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PonyOfWar@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
At this point my phone from 2022 is way overpowered for every use case I have for it. So why upgrade? It was a bit different years ago, when new phones actually did exciting new things older phones couldn’t do. But now the technology has pretty much matured, and upgrades are incremental at best.

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- ByteSorcerer@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I am typing this on a 5 year old Android phone. It has 128GB of memory and 8GB of RAM, very decent cameras, a beautiful OLED screen and a processor that is more than fast enough for everything I do with it. And even now the battery still lasts two days with normal use. It cost me about €300 at the time.
  
  Unfortunately the Android version is getting so far behind that some apps are starting to get a few issues, so I have been checking out some black Friday deals for new phones, but they look very disappointing.
  
  In the current market it seems like I’d have to pay about €500 to effectively just get a side-grade. All €300 offerings look like just a straight up downgrade in any way apart from the more recent android version.
  
  So I think I’ll hold on to this one a while longer. Hardware-wise it’s still in perfect condition, and if software support really becomes an issue then perhaps I’ll try out a custom ROM.
  
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- boonhet@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Also if you keep it for longer, the performance boost from a new one is noticeable. If you replace every 2 years, you get an imperceptible change and have to waste more money for it lol
  
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lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This is almost a textbook example of the broken window fallacy.

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- gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  especially if it’s a windows phone :D
  
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gerryflap@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The person who wrote this must be absolutely insane. How I’d it a bad thing for the world that people are holding on to their devices? Less e-waste and people don’t spend impulsively. It’s also very logical: smartphones reached a plateau and people aren’t exactly swimming in money with the rising price of everything.

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- HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The person is writing from a business prospective. If people are replacing their phones less often, it means that fewer phones are being purchased each year. If your company makes phones, that means adjusting to a shrinking market no matter what your company does.
  
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  - t3rmit3@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    that means adjusting to a shrinking market no matter what your company does.
    
    Which is good. Markets are supposed to go up and down, and responsible businesses would have the capital reserved to weather the troughs, but no companies are responsible anymore, and they waste any capital reserves on appeasing short-term shareholders who don’t give a rat’s ass about the long-term prospects of the company.
    
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yessikg@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
That's not even 3 years, gotta get those rookie numbers up

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- Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Fr, my phone was over 3x as old when I traded it in, and it wasn’t even broken. I just knew I had to replace it in the next 4 years and didn’t want to get hit with tariffs.
  
  2 years is a good start for people who trade in annually, though. Gotta start somewhere!
  
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- Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’m on a 4 year old iPhone SE 🫡
  
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Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Kevin Williams, the author of this article is a very special breed of stupid.

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- spit_evil_olive_tips@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  yeah…his previous article just before this one was “Americans are heating their homes with bitcoin this winter”
  
  you’re a couple years late to that hype cycle, Kevin.
  
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- its_me_xiphos@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Kevin, if thats even a real person at this point in media, is just pushing stories and discourse aligned with corporate speak. Let’s consider it less stupid and more complicit, which I argue, is even worse.
  
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- Powderhorn@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I dislike having the comma of direct address thrown at me. At least close the aside!
  
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  - TehPers@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Nah they’re referring to a different Kevin Williams.
    
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User79185@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
capitalist propaganda

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scroll_responsibly@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Good.

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its_me_xiphos@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I am not an economist. I am not an expert on anything consumer. It is, however, plainly obvious that companies are trying to squeeze blood from a stone at this point. They can’t make money anymore with pay to own and innovation like they used to for a variety of reasons. From greed to enshitification. If you look at it with a different view, everyone is poorer because they are greedy, they’ve ruined everyone’s lives but must make numbers go up. So they find new and terrifying ways of screwing you over for diminishing returns. Like this. Relying on turnover sales and nothing else.

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- gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  Relying on turnover sales and nothing else.
  
  The best way to grow the economy is to develop spaceflight. If you fly to mars, there’s millions of acres of free real estate waiting for you. Time to construct and grow the market.
  
  There’s no more meaningful growth on Earth possible, because the physical limits have been reached. This effect has been predicted as far back as in 1970 with the report: The Limits To Growth. We’re finally seeing the effects of that now.
  
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Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Oh my bad, I need to consume more to increase shareholder value. Almost forgot

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Powderhorn@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I don’t like to comment twice, but holy fuck … what the hell did I just read?

The framing here puts the Louvre to shame (they’ve currently got their own problems). Perhaps the purest perversion of capitalism is the idea that sufficient is never enough.

Look: Phones are commodities at this point. You only need a new one when the old one breaks. You don’t call a plumber to replace your pipes every two years; it’s generally because something shitty happens. Sometimes literally.

This feels like the pendulum swinging back, to the alarm of capital. I’m old enough to remember appliances being expected to last 20 years. Fridge, oven, TV, washer and dryer: All were expected to be single-time replacements over the course of a 30-year mortgage.

Hence growing up with a fridge in almond and a Kenmore set of laundry machines in mustard yellow. And a console Sony TV that made it through my entire console gaming time.

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Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
29 months is too long??? I consider that the absolutely minimum.

If my device doesn’t last at least 36 months I look for a new company. I aim for at least 48 months.

I refuse to buy Samsung or Google devices anymore, since they definitely did not meet my 36 month criteria. They didn’t even make it to 24. Google did at first with my Nexus 4 and I loved it but they shit the bed real quick after that.

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- SteevyT@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Either I’ve had weirdly good luck with Samsung, or climate exceptionally gentle on phones. I expect 6 years minimum out of my Notes, and so far that’s held up.
  
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  - Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I spent $1000 on my Samsung (S6? I can’t even remember anymore) and it’s battery shit the bed after like 12 months and the charging port no longer worked unless the cord was exactly in a specific angle and pressure on order to recharge it. It was a pain in the ass and cheaper to buy a new phone than to fix it.
    
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  - gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    i had a samsung s4 mini (one of those really old phones, which are closer to a nokia brick than a modern smartphone IMHO) for years and it worked well. it lasted for 5+ years minimum. i bought a new samsung smartphone in 2022 (second hand though) and it shipped broken. randomly shut down, some kind of power issue. i never bothered to return it because it was rather cheap anyways and i had installed a custom OS on it at that point, which voids the warranty.
    
    I bought a motorola afterwards but am only semi-happy with it. everything seems to work well with it, but i don’t feel like it’s a good phone. it feels kinda sleazy, somehow. i’m not sure whether it’s only because of the color scheme it uses or sth else, but it doesn’t feel alright. i’m still looking for a new phone.
    
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- its_me_xiphos@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I bought an older Samsung and only usenitnfor doom scrolling and podcasts. Its fine stripped down to nothingness. My.next purchase will be an older Pixel so I can run GraphineOS. I’m hopeful that like my Linux experience, buying old laptops and kicking windows to the curb in favor of Linux buys you tons of time and product life.
  
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- gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  any recommendations for long-lasting phones?
  
  for desktop computers it used to be acer (laptop) for me. i bought one in 2012 and it lasted close to 10 years, which i consider really long. even then, i didn’t buy a new one because of hardware defects, but because the hardware specs were long out of date. i bought a new acer (laptop) in 2021 and it enshittified heavily, lasting only 18 months before i had to buy a new computer.
  
  then i bought a thinkpad and have been happy with it ever since. it’s been running for at least 2-3 years by now and shows no signs of aging at all, even though it’s already second-hand. great device.
  
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Kwakigra@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The nerve of CNBC to use the word “hoarding” and and not mention the actual cause of the problem being the declining wealth of the median household relative to wealth hoarders.

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carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
have had my phone for close to 5 years now. it could use a battery replacement, but other than that it’s perfectly fine, so im gonna keep it for as long as i can

and if that makes tim cook cry… so be it lol

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gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
29 months is a long time?

I’ve had this one since 2019

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- runner_g@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  My wife finally upgraded after 5 years, and I’m on year 4 of my Pixel 6 and its still going strong, will probably go another 1-2 years with it.
  
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twinnie@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
What a load of bullshit. Maybe I misread it but it says that German companies would be 101% more productive if they bought newer laptops and phones (American ones no doubt). They also claim that businesses are trying to use old hardware for modern workloads. Apparently a six year old laptop can’t handle Outlook and Word.

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- 4am@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  To be fair, current laptops don’t handle Outlook and Word very well.
  
  It’s probably not the hardware that is the issue.
  
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  - SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    You can’t polish a turd ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    
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  - SteevyT@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Hell, Windows 11 is broken enough on my work laptop that it sometimes struggles with fucking explorer.exe, and this damn thing will run multithousand part CAD models without too much hassle while Windows isnt fucking up.
    
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- dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It genuinely floors me that few medium and large-sized companies don’t use Linux for desktops. You can customize gnome or KDE to work very similarly to windows from a UI/UX perspective, especially with the number of web based apps companies rely on. Windows and Office might start sucking less if they had real competition.
  
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  - sanzky@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    MDM and support costs.
    
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  - ByteSorcerer@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The main reason is tech debt and proprietary software. Most companies have decades of software infrastructure all built on Microsoft based systems. Transitioning all that stuff to Linux is a massive investment, especially taking into account the downtime it’ll cause combined with the temporary decrease in productivity when everyone has to get trained and build up experience with the new platform.
    
    And then you have to deal with proprietary software. A lot of niche corporate or industrial hardware only supports Windows. And you probably have to regularly interact with customers who use Windows and share files with you that can only be opened in Windows only proprietary software.
    
    Linux also frequently struggles with a lot of weird driver issues and other weird quirks, causing an increased burden on the IT department.
    
    Basically you’re looking at a massive investment in the short term, for significantly reduced productivity in the long run. And all that mostly to save a bit of hardware costs, which are only a fraction of the operating costs for most companies. Just sticking with Windows ends up being the more economical choice for most companies.
    
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  - 4am@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There is a lot of specialized shit that Excel does that calc isn’t up to par on.
    
    You also can’t easily cripple calc with group policy (no pesky macros or external connections, you little babies! Copy and paste or get dead)
    
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  - gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    It genuinely floors me that few medium and large-sized companies don’t use Linux for desktops.
    
    our university does. at least on most computers.
    
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Talaraine@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Costing the economy..... hahahahahaha

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Rooskie91@discuss.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Yeah, well, what has the economy done for me lately?

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- Powderhorn@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Most likely fucked you?
  
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thesmokingman@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The big given example was gigabit throughput. Most consumers in the US, businesses included, don’t have access to internet infrastructure capable of multigig because of regulatory capture. Those that do are already using multigig hardware which, unsurprisingly, hasn’t really changed much.

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jherazob@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Image

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CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
X to doubt.

About the “hurting the economy” part. Replacing more stuff = more economy is a well-known economics fallacy and they should know better.

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- Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  you will oblige me to call out, “Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen.”
  
  We stan a polite and precise, yet no less scathing for it, trash talker 😄❤️
  
  That’s pretty much the “check yourself before you wreck yourself” of his age
  
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Powderhorn@beehaw.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I got a new phone about a week ago. My old one was wildly overpowered for my use case, but … I accidentally sat on it briefly, and the screen was never the same. I went from a Pixel 6 Pro to a 9a, and … yeah, the screen seemed slightly smaller for a couple of days, but otherwise, it’s faster than a device twice the price in 2021.

As with computers, we’ve hit “good enough” with phones for the most part. If you know why you need GPU cycles, that of course is another story, but for basic compute, we’ve nailed it. Hell, I’d still be running my i7-3770K – a processor I bought in 2012 – had my motherboard not died.

Things get shitty in terms of margins at the top of any technological S-curve.

I spent $500 on a phone that will get nearly seven years of updates, as I didn’t buy it release day. Assuming I don’t sit on it, that’s a remaining 78 months at $6.41/month. My service is $15/month.

There’s no money here anymore.

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HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
this sounds like the housing market stuff. you want folks to spend then get them jobs that provide for food and shelter and utilities and health insurance and then enough extra to spend on stuff.

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- gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  get them jobs
  
  jobs are ableist. i don’t see why people revere them so much.
  
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  - HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    depends on the way you look at it. being paid for what you contribute or contributing to get pay.
    
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