When I got my first cell phone two years ago, I opted for a budget model. The smartphone that I wanted at the time was hundreds of dollars. Now, two years later, that phone is not only obsolete and gone, but it’s removed by three or four model generations’ worth of phone. I’m not aware of any other consumer device category that seems to so constantly and aggressively issue new models on such a timetable.
Why is this condition so prevalent among cell phones?
Don’t pay too much attention to the PC market, eh?
I agree that the pace of development is much faster for cell phones than PCs. I think this mostly has to do with Apple’s re-invention of the “smartphone,” when they introduced the iPhone 3 years ago. Since the iPhone made all other phones on the market at that time look like relics, every other manufacturer has been playing catch-up, and the pace of product development has been astounding.
Also, on a more basic level, cell phones still have a lot of development to look forward to, unlike PCs. For example, the average person doesn’t really care if their computer has decent speech recognition, because nobody wants to speed all day talking to their screen. However, good speech recognition would COMPLETELY revolutionize the way people interact with their smartphones. I play with Dragon Dictate, and it’s a neat demo, but it is only about 10% of the way to a full solution.
Then, there is the hardware itself. Unlike desktop computers, phones are very power-constrained. Inventing new display technologies, power-efficient processors, or better batteries gives the manufacturer a big boost over their competition.
To make money.
Folks who are content with a phone that make phone calls, and maybe take pictures, do not add any money to the bottom line of phone companies. They need to create obsolescence to drive sales.
I have had my cell phone for over two years, and see no reason to change it. It does what I want a phone to do.
Otherwise the phone companies would have to compete on:[ul]
[li]the quality of calls over their network, [/li][li] the coverage of the network, [/li][li]the accuracy of their bills,[/li][li]the quality & friendliness of their customer service. [/ul][/li]They don’t want that!
Let’s also not forget the fact that phone companies are subsidizing the cost of new phones in a way that’s not true for any other device that I can think of. They build it into your monthly fee, and hook you for another two-year contract, so it’s a deal for the phone companies and manufacturers. Meanwhile, the new and upgraded phone looks free to the consumer, so it’s a deal for them too.
If everyone had to pay for it all out of pocket, I suspect you’d see less impetus for the newest and greatest every moment.
Also a lot of the “new features” are just gimmicks that aren’t all that new. For example, phones have had voice-dialing for years. The new voice-search phone is just a small incremental improvement over that. Streaming TV and music, maps and GPS and a host of other functions are all just network-based services that aren’t really new - they’ve been available on smart phones for years and desktops for decades.
Heh. I got my laptop in December (that is, 7 months ago) and not only are they no longer selling it on the company’s website - replaced by the new model, but it’s not even mentioned there. Went to find the manual for it and it’s like it doesn’t even exist anymore.
Yeah, I can get the manual - it’s the fact that the company doesn’t acknowledge the 7-month old product line as even existing on their official website that bothers me.
[quote=“t-bonham@scc.net, post:5, topic:544944”]
Otherwise the phone companies would have to compete on:[LIST]
[li]the quality of calls over their network, [/li][li] the coverage of the network,[/li][/QUOTE]
My understanding is that in Europe, the various carriers use the same technology, so there’s no need to compete on network coverage. Also, as I understand it, they don’t subsidize the phone purchase, so consumers there are tied to the two-year contract period before they can upgrade their phones. I’ve read some articles that said that European and Asian customers upgrade their phones more often than Americans do.
They hit fashion accessory status. Remember the PDA boom? The beeper boom? The mobile-email boom? All dead now, but this isn’t the first time that mankind turned to a small mobile device to prove how big his schlong is.
A false comparison really since the companies who make phones (Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola etc. etc.) aren’t the companies who provide you with access to the phone network. It’s like saying that computer hardware develops quickly so people don’t notice how poor ISPs are.
I’m going to assume from the above that you weren’t around when the Blackberry (AKA “Crackberry” from the addiction the financial industry had with it) was first introduced. The original Blackberry was at least as far beyond its competitors as the iPhone was when it was introduced.
Well, there are inkjet printer companies and the ink;)
Sure, and that started a race between Blackberry and Palm, but the vast majority of those users were getting those phones for business. The iPhone opened up a vastly bigger market for all users - anyone who wants to have web access on the go.
You know, 5 years ago, the digital camera market was in the same position. Every manufacturer raced to be the first to each megapixal milestone, and each one re-released their phones on a 6 or 12 month time line. The goal, of course, was to get the consumers to buy the latest and greatest each year, either just in time for the holidays, or just in time for vacation season. What the manufacturers didn’t tell you was that your older camera still worked just as well, and 1 more megapixel wasn’t going to make much difference in your pictures.
Today’s cell phone market works the same way, with one major difference. A cell phones is no longer “just a phone,” it is actually an ultra portable PC. My iPhone sitting next to me has the specs of my PC from about 6 or 7 years ago. With so much power in such a small package, developers are re-writing the book on what a cell phone’s purpose is, and every time they come up with a good idea, another round of phones gets released.
But the lesson we learned 5 years ago (though some of us didn’t learn it) still holds true. Your old phone still works fine, it just lacks the newest fad-like features. If you think those features will improve your life in a meaningful way, buy the new phone. If you can get past the techno-lust and realize that you don’t really need the new features, save your money, and squeeze another two-year-contract out of your old handset.
Part of the reason it seems like the pace is so furious is that there’s a bunch of players in the game, and they all make a bunch of models at different levels (ie basic flip phone, basic QWERTY phone, multimedia QWERTY, low-end smartphone, high-end smartphone). Also, due to licensing agreements, most companies make different variants of their top models for different companies. So it seems like A NEW BIG PHONE EVERY DAY, but it’s really not SO nuts. I’d say most models stick around about a year before being replaced by an incremental upgrade, which isn’t TOO nutty for the tech market, but the sheer number of companies and model lines makes it seem REALLY accelerated.
So, possibly recapping, cell phones just haven’t hit a limit yet in terms of feature-growth. They’ll keep coming out with new models until they are constrained by technology, and the technoly has hit its limit.
What I can’t understand is why so many cell phone manufacturers are struggling financially. With such demand you’d think they’d be making money hand-over-fist.
Remember the “Razor”? It was the cool phone for a while. Motorola has since shut down the site that designed them and laid off all the engineers. (So I hear from my technical friends in that area)
Not quite. Cell phones companies in the US use the exclusivity of certain phones as a selling point for their service. AT&T having the iPhone is one major reason that T-mobile is in trouble now. By subsidizing the newest phones, they can stimulate demand, and attract new customers. Accordingly, they don’t have to compete much on price, service, etc. Since smartphones are basically computers, they will advance at the roughly the same rate, becoming cheaper and faster every year. Since the manufacturers know their products will be subsidized by the carriers, and that people will often buy a new phone once their contract ends, there is a strong incentive to keep advancing the technology.
Probably because they aren’t selling it any more. I suspect you’d find support for it.
But I wonder how different the stuff they are selling now is from the stuff they sold six months ago. There is probably a minor speed bump on the processor, likely from more cache, and a bit more disk, and maybe a slightly better graphics chip. But in general things have stabilized pretty much. For phones we had the iPhone breakout, and then competition thanks to Android, so things are moving.