The recent release of the new iPhone 7 had every Apple fan on their feet and ready to pre-order the brand new device. Is it much different than the previous model? Not necessarily. Does it have essential new functions? Maybe. Is it worth to pay almost 800 euros for it and replace your perfectly good iPhone 5 or 6? Probably not. Will you do it? Probably yes, at least eventually.
In general, Apple releases a brand new model of iPhone every year, be it respectively iPhone 6 and an upgrade to that model in the consecutive year in the form of iPhone 6S. That seems quite often doesn’t it? Especially since regular people (that are not Apple-obsessed) while buying a new smartphone and paying such a high price for it, expect it to work for at least a couple of years, as long as they don’t accidentally throw it out of a moving car or flush it in the toilet (worth to mention that this risk was resolved with the new, water-resistant iPhone 7). However with each release, sales of the new model skyrocket and bring crazy revenues to the makers of this smartphone. It is enough to look at the figures from 2014, which amount to almost 170 million units sold worldwide, to understand the magnitude of their customer base.
So why do people keep buying new iPhones with each release? Is everyone so clumsy and destroys their phone just after 1 year of usage? A recent number of articles might just provide the answer to that question.
iPhone 6 “touch disease” – a flickering grey bar across the top of the screen, no response to touch commands – does it ring a bell? Many customers are complaining that their phones die after this happens without any specific reason and blame it on bad manufacturing. Apple however, does not respond to these allegations and is not willing to fix these defects after the warranty has expired. Worth to mention, the defect appears only sometime after the smartphone was no longer protected by the warranty. Coincidence?
The whole problem described above might just be the perfect example of a business strategy, that is often applied when it comes to electronics, which is called planned obsolescence. The idea behind it is to make use of the process of a device becoming obsolete (no longer usable) in order to encourage consumers to buy a newer version available on the market. Normal obsolescence of a product usually takes a long time if the device is well manufactured, so some businesses decide to speed up this process by building it into a product from its conception. Therefore not only the “touch disease” might be considered as part of the built-in obsolescence in iPhones – what about weaker batteries, buttons breaking, not supporting new iOS upgrades by older devices?
Even though all of it sounds like a sinister plot to take more and more money from consumers, other actually positive aspects should also be considered. One example could be that in order to produce and sell each new release of an iPhone, millions of people must be employed, which on a macroeconomic scale has a positive impact on economic growth and the job market. So maybe it is not so bad after all?
I would like to sum up with a quote from Philip Kotler, a marketing guru, who says: “Much so-called planned obsolescence is the working of the competitive and technological forces in a free society—forces that lead to ever-improving goods and services.”
Have you ever experienced built-in obsolescence with any of your devices? Feel free to share your thoughts!
References:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160612-heres-the-truth-about-the-planned-obsolescence-of-tech
http://www.economist.com/node/13354332
http://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-iphone-sales-since-3rd-quarter-2007/
Thank you for the interesting topic you brought up. I actually do have experienced planned obsolescence myself with my previous phone, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The last android update released for it was only 1,5 years after the release of the phone. After awhile I started noticing that certain (new) applications were not compatible with my phone anymore, forcing me to buy a new one if I wanted to use it.
In my opinion it is a smart, but user unfriendly, strategy applied by companies.
I’d say that this is a very different issue, namely the evolution of software and hardware that renders the legacy versions of either unusable.
Google has a policy for their Nexus line – 2 years of software support, and thus Android updates. It’s a short amount of time, in the grand scheme of things. But in the world of smartphones and tech, it’s an eternity. Things evolve so quickly that the makers of current smartphones and applications cannot be expected to support versions that are outdated. It’s the same with computers: it’d be a foolish to expect even the most basic Web2.0 pages to work on an old Windows 98 machine, and it wouldn’t make sense for developers to develop new updates of applications for outdated versions of Windows or macOS either.
On a consumer level, it all seems like it would be but the matter of a few lines of code, but once you dive into the technical aspects, so much has changed in security features, processor architecture and the way applications and OSes are built that the cost/time-to-support benefit simply isn’t worth it.
On planned obsolescence, though: I’m of the opinion that although there surely are business practices that are questionable at best, most of the argument relies on consumers pitching “large corporations” as creators of a consumer society that “forces” us to buy the latest and greatest. I’m taking the sphere of smartphones here. Technology evolves very, very quickly, and this evolution brings a whole new set of issues. Increasing minaturisation of chip architecture, the need for more efficient hard- and software, reliability that needs to be, in the grand scheme of things, shockingly high (think about the last time you rebooted your smartphone, barring any major crashes. It’s on 24/7, syncs with hundreds of different services every second and is ready to use whenever, wherever).
“Planned obsolescence”, in this case, is merely a fact of older generations being surpassed in orders of magnitude by newer devices. Sure, a Galaxy Nexus still “works” – but opening it up to newer versions of Android and applications would result in a subpar user experience with crashes, slowdowns and newer apps simply refusing to start because the older hardware cannot handle newer processes. Instead of allowing this, manufacturers lock their devices in the last stable and smooth-running version of iOS or Android.
Same goes with buttons breaking – you unlock your smartphone an average of 80 times a day (1). 120000 times in two years,lock-unlock, with a push switch that is half a millimetre across. Will it fail, eventually? Maybe. Have a Galaxy S7? That’s 3.6 million pixels that will be turned on for an average of 1.5 hours a day. (2). And there will likely be not a single one of them failing a year, or two, from now. Yet even if it does, it’s a testament to how resilient everything has become.
Planned obsolescence in consumer electronics? I’d call it technology that evolves so quickly that it has no choice but to leave outdated cousins in the dust.
(1)http://www.techtimes.com/articles/151633/20160420/how-many-times-do-you-unlock-your-iphone-per-day-heres-the-answer-from-apple.htm
(2)http://bgr.com/2014/05/29/smartphone-computer-usage-study-chart/
The thought of companies building the devices, not only smartphones, but electronics in general, to fail after a certain time, is an interesting proposed aspect of doing business in this highly competitive industry. In the lights of the recent release of the new iPhone 7, it seems users frequently trading their current device, in this case an iPhone for the next generation of devices. Looking at some statistics, most users, in the US and overall expect to trade their mobile phone within 1 to 3 years for a newer model.
GRAPH
(http://www.statista.com/statistics/241036/ownership-time-length-of-current-mobile-phone-until-replacement/)
However, I do propose that this change is more related due to wear out of components in the phone simply because of their frequency of use and incorrect use of the consumer. As stated in the previous comment, todays’ consumer electronics is in use basically 24/7, especially our smartphone. Looking at some numbers, Time Magazine quoted some interesting data from Deloitte, which conducted some studies on mobile phone use for the US, that is indicating, that Americans us their phone about 46 times a day on average. Furthermore, age groups from 18-24 check their phone on average 74 times a day and people between 25-34 on average 50 times a day. If one takes this into account, this makes a staggering use of 18250 times a year for the age group of 25-34. Using a device extensively means naturally, that is will wear out quicker and therefore one has to look at the most vulnerable components of a phone. As devices become more powerful, however, advances in all areas need to be made to make new generation devices possible. Nevertheless, battery technology is lacking behind when it comes to advances in computing power or other areas. The issue is related to more powerful processors, and much higher resolution screens that are much more power hungry and therefore drain batteries more quickly. On top of this, there are new features such as NFC (Near Field Communication), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, etc. The same holds true for the most up-to-date applications, that demand more electricity as well.
GRAPH
(https://www.statista.com/chart/563/improvements-wanted-by-mobile-device-users/)
In the above graph one can see that battery life is one of the most critical factors for consumers when it comes to improvements on smartphones.
Having a critical look at yearly releases of new smartphones, such as with Apple and its yearly iPhone releases, and so it seems shortened lifespan of electronic devices, one has to say that regular usage of electronic devices has significantly increased in the last decade. Furthermore, technology has become much more powerful and is continuing its trend to excel. This means that there is more pressure on all parts of the device to grow with it, in order to make the next generation smartphone or laptop possible. In case of Apple, this means advancements in making the new phone even thinner, lighter, more powerful, and equip it with even better features such as a new camera. Firstly, Apple is releasing an iPhone every year, to be able to compete with its very strong competition. Furthermore, the company from Cupertino is advancing into emerging markets, as the developed economies are relatively saturated. Additionally, Apple does need to fight heavily with Google, as the Android OS is vastly used across the planet, and Apple is trying to keep up with Google to some extent, pushing iOS to new users.
GRAPH
(http://www.statista.com/statistics/266136/global-market-share-held-by-smartphone-operating-systems/)
Overall, I would suggest the frequency that users do switch to newer technology is more related to components wear out over time, rather than a build-to-fail, strategy by the companies. Of course it is difficult to assess if this wear out is due to simple lifespan of the component or if it has been altered with in manufacturing to make the component fail quicker. However, there are is a huge market for second hand electronics, especially Apple products, that still run perfectly, despite maybe having lost OS update support by Apple. As pointed out in the previous comment, it does not make sense economically to support each OS version, as it would require too many resources and would make systems unstable at one point in time. Furthermore, customers do expect to switch their smartphone anyways in 1 to 3 years, means by then they simply upgrading to better technology, as 3 years is usually a huge timespan when it comes to technological advances.
References:
http://www.statista.com/statistics/241036/ownership-time-length-of-current-mobile-phone-until-replacement/
http://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/technology-media-and-telecommunications/articles/global-mobile-consumer-survey-us-edition.html#
http://time.com/4147614/smartphone-usage-us-2015/
http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/Technology-Media-Telecommunications/gx-tmt-pred15-smartphone-batteries.pdf
https://www.statista.com/chart/563/improvements-wanted-by-mobile-device-users/
http://www.statista.com/statistics/266136/global-market-share-held-by-smartphone-operating-systems/
Very nice article! I have recently seen a documentary on planned obsolescence: “The Lightbulb Conspiracy”. The documentary is about the history of planned obsolescence that started with the light bulb lasting too long. It also shows how modern-day printers are fitted with a chip that renders the printer useless after a certain amount of prints. I can definitely recommend this to anyone. You can watch it for free on YouTube.
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825163/
YouTube: https://youtu.be/-1j0XDGIsUg