We don’t have to limit it to people you know
People upgrade their phones about once every 2.5 years
https://www.refurb.me/blog/how-long-does-a-smartphone-last-r...
But, go figure, the sticker price is like 10-15% higher than on the Apple site.
They just hid the interest in the price.
Same, on Apple’s site: $699
IDK, maybe apple price-dropped today and T-Mobile hasn’t caught up, but that’s similar to what I’ve seen in the past when I’ve looked at buying through them.
But even that do they don’t value phone upgrades. When I see their ancient phones I sometimes remark they can get a phone with monthly terms and they just shrug and say the sad device with cracked screens and ancient cameras and crap display resolution and brightness is good enough for them. It baffles me, but most people just use their phone for texting, occasionally a map, and a crappy camera. Only in my tech friend circle do people keep up.
You can easily look up the average time between phone upgrades is between 2-3 years.
64% are living paycheck to paycheck, now whether they opt to get a new smartphone or not is not clear.
What is clear is the statistics you linked and I could find were polls of either people buying a new phone, which would be structurally biased towards people who are buying phones make frequently and are not buying used phones, or they were surveys of people with some relationship with a mobile or tech related site or product. These don’t seem like very unbiased surveys - but they do seem like sources apple or a phone maker would care about. “Of the people we care about in our marketing, they buy every 2-3 years.” I know in my family my wife’s family inherits our old phones and would ever show up in such a poll, nor do people buying off eBay, or even used from Amazon, etc.
Maybe a single mom working three jobs to raise their five children really does feel compelled to have the newest iPhones and puts her kids needs behind a high resolution screen, but I somehow believe she’s just not counted in market surveys of phone buyers.
If given a choice between every single citation I could find on the internet and your anecdotes of what your family does, which one do you think is more reliable?
I’d not the median household income is 70k, which means half of all households make less than that. The median personal income is $40k.
Again, we aren’t getting remotely close to 99% of people are upgrading every 2-4 years.
On the entire internet every source cites 2-3 years but you choose not to believe it because it doesn’t support your worldview?
And in the US, even the MVNOs that are targeted toward lower income buyers subsidize phones where you get them for “free”.
But you’re telling me on the entire internet you can’t find one statistic that supports your claim?
It seems the only progress is the camera and the CPU, but for what more CPU speed? The camera?
It’s really not that hard to find statistics. It’s 2.5 - 3 years
https://www.refurb.me/blog/how-long-does-a-smartphone-last-r...
https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-2-year-mobile-phone-upgrade-c...
I know multiple people still using an iPhone X (2018), for whom cost is not an issue.
The main reason for the majority of the general population to upgrade is because the phone literally breaks (screen, stops charging, radio malfunctions, etc)