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.
Research released by the Federal Reserve last month concludes that each additional year companies delay upgrading equipment results in a productivity decline of about one-third of a percent, with investment patterns accounting for approximately 55% of productivity gaps between advanced economies. The good news: businesses in the U.S. are generally quicker to reinvest in replacing aging equipment. The Federal Reserve report shows that if European productivity had matched U.S. investment patterns starting in 2000, the productivity gap between the U.S and European economic heavyweights would have been reduced by 29 percent for the U.K., 35 percent for France, and 101% for Germany.
My $1000 piece of electronics lasted 2 years! YAYYYY!!!!
That comes out to $1.37 a day. I definitely think hardware should last way longer than that, and I even have computers running at my house that are over 12 years old, but $1.37 a day for something that most people use as much as their phone is not a bad deal. In this economy, that's like half of a gas station soft drink, or like 10 miles worth of gas.
Edit: Or 2 chicken McNuggets.
Yeah it took me a gpfew years to hop on the smartphone bandwagon because they seemed so expensive for something as unnecessary as a phone. Then I did the same math, considered how much I actually use it, even just for insipid games. The cost per use or per minute use, or for functionality is pretty reasonable, especially as phones get more capable.
Ironically, it’s my computer that fails that math, especially as phones take over more functionality we used to need computers for