Technology

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.

People are returning to normal device lifecycles and the greed can't cope

"Economy" is almost always corpo newspeak for wealthy people's money. If they actually meant the economy as in everyone's stake in the economic system the phrase "cost the economy" would be meaningless. Buy devices second hand direct from individual seller markets or older models. The article also quotes multiple CEOs but no labor leaders.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?!

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.

Quickly and people, you need to become more wasteful again, you're hurting the economy

29 months is too long??? I consider that the absolute 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.

Edit: Archive of the page

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 that 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.

"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, but the US doesn't punish that anymore.

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

Good.

Oh my bad, I need to consume more to increase shareholder value. Almost forgot

Kevin Williams, the author of this article is a very special breed of stupid.

please continue to "device hoard" folks

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.

29 months is a long time?

I've had this one since 2019

This is almost a textbook example of the broken window fallacy.

capitalist propaganda

That's not even 3 years, gotta get those rookie numbers up

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.

kill the job market, ramp up inflation.... who could have ever seen this coming.

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

Smartphone companies are trying to push phones with planned-obsolescence on people sothat people buy new phones more frequently, and that's a bad thing for the consumers because they have to spend more money.

The best way to respond to that is if consumers prefer buying smartphones from companies who have produced long-lived smartphones in the past. That means if company A produces shitty, short-lived smartphones, people indeed buy a new smartphone after a short while but from another company B who is willing to develop better quality.

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.

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.

Yeah, well, what has the economy done for me lately?