Scheduled obsolescence. The theme came up after the controversy involving iPhones that deliberately lose processing power (ie, slow down) when the battery starts to deteriorate. A gesture that apparently, according to the company's speech, Apple made to extend the useful life of the devices even more, ended up being interpreted by many precisely in the opposite way.
But leaving this story momentarily aside, have you ever stopped to think, on average, how long an iPhone lasts? Or a Mac? And an iPad? How long does a user stay with the same device before switching to another model? For Horace Dediu did that account.
He made a direct relationship between the number of devices sold and the number of active devices (an information that Apple released at its last financial event). In general, the result is that, of each three devices sold, two are still active.
Based on this same formula, Dediu shows us how the iPhone's useful life has evolved over time:
According to him, the useful life is the horizontal distance between the two vertical bars at the point where they have the same length. The upper vertical bar measures the space between the area (devices sold) and the curve (active devices); the lower bar is the space between the area and the “X” axis, that is, the devices sold. When these two bars are the same size, the distance between them is the lifetime (at the time of the top bar).
Arithmetically, the average useful life at a given time ("T") is the duration between "T" and the time when the accumulated devices sold reached the cumulative retired devices at time "T". So, 2.05 billion retired devices accumulated less 1.3 billion active devices. We then reached 750 million. And the time in which the accumulated equipment sold reached 750 million was the third quarter of 2013. The estimated life expectancy in the time between now and the third quarter of 2013, that is, 17 quarters (or about 4 years and 3 months).
It is worth noting that this period includes Macs, iPhones, iPads, iPods touch and Apple Watches. For some products (like iPhones and Apple Watches, 4 years and 3 months seem a lot); for others, like Macs and iPads, they seem little. That is precisely why it is the average, since each one pulls the scale to his side. Would it be very interesting to see this study being done with each product category, in the same?
But the surprising thing is that 2/3 of all devices already produced and sold by Apple continue to be used in the world and it shows us, in a way as good as satisfaction surveys, how users are satisfied with their devices.
via AppleInsider
