What happens when smartphones become too good?
by Horace Dediu
Thoughts just before the Duo launched
The smartphone industry has spent much of its history persuading consumers that the device in their pocket could be substantially better. Cameras improved, screens sharpened, and mobile networks advanced. Each generation offered another reason to replace the last. Today’s phones present manufacturers with a more complicated proposition. Consumers now keep smartphones for roughly four years, according to global technology market research firm Counterpoint Research, while resale and refurbishment keep devices in circulation longer. Counterpoint found that the global installed base of active smartphones grew 2 percent in 2025 even as replacement cycles approached four years.
Source: The Beiruter
NB: I had the pleasure of an interview with Katharine …
…Sorensen of The Beiruter while riding the shuttle bus to the Apple iPhone event last week. Her questions could not consider the Duo as it had not yet launched but we discussed the more profound question of good enough phones.
3 comments
masanti.luis ·
The actual replacement cycle is 4 years. Maybe… yes, maybe accidentally… Apple launched a new Upgrade program with —if I am not wron— shorter replacement times. This would ‘presume‘ that Apple was all this coming.
On the other hand… widening customers' options is another way to win over longer replacement cycles.
rbgayle ·
Does the new Upgrade plan give Apple control of 2-3 year old phones they can then sell as refurbished to a larger audience, rather than see 3rd parties make that money? I think so. How popular will leasing an iPhone be for businesses? I suspect very. These could be very large new sources of revenue.
oonlan ·
I think the long-term move is towards glasses, after the UI and social issues are resolved which I think they can be.
In the short and medium term, phones have been "too good" for a while. Unless you're heavily into content creation and need a good camera, there's been zero reason to spend more than $350 on a phone for a few years: we use the exact same apps that were running delightfully well 5 years ago already. But phones are handbags/sneakers now: social markers, not tools for a job. That's a bit sad since the market favours bling over features - at least we're on the way to getting decent batteries, but skinny screen formats, limited storage, and few ports seem set to keep plaguing us - I hoped Android would have been a bit more diverse, but versatile 16:10 and 16:9 screens have disappeared in favor of tiktokers' 20:9; even SD ports and audio jacks are getting rare, and dual-USB phones are nowhere to be seen (an issue on long flights when you need to charge up and have run out of juice on your wireless headphones). So I'd argue phones have been getting too good in some ways, but worse in other ways.
Also, on the Android side, there's been a move to make Phones into regular PCs for a while with Samsung's DeX, and something from Huawei, and Android's OK-ish basic desktop UI/UX (compared to iOS, Android has a lot more amenities built in, though support and apps are patchy: keyboards shortcuts, standard USB peripherals support from version 1.0 ie keyboards, mice and trackpads, storage, webcams, speakers, printers, gamepads, ... Phones can be the PC of 80% of home users, and given the onslaught of bad webapps / Electron fake native apps on desktop OSes, probably even be an upgrade. That gives phones some room for progression: generalize Video-out, improve the Desktop UI/UX/apps...
But punters seem to have stopped thinking in terms of functionnality anyway, so whether a phone is too good is irrelevant, what matters is whether you got the latest and the top of the line or not. I've been moving steadily downmarket from my initial Galaxy Notes and I'm delighted with my $200 5yo Moto Edge 20 Lite (AMOLED screen, 5G, SD slot, audio Jack, 8 GB RAM and 128+512GB storage, good speakers, battery was good initially ^^ ... the screen is dim+reflective, and the camera only usable in uniformly good lighting - or to scan papers which is 50% of my usage), but that's not worth an extra $500 to me, there's plenty of ppl with expensive cameraphones at family events, might as well use them for once.