Americans Loyally Spend 3 Years Using Their Old Phones, Study Found

Vaibhav Kapadia - Sep 04, 2019

According to a study, it seems like new updated features of smartphones couldn’t convince Americans to change their phone annually.

A recent study from Strategy Analytics has reflected a new perspective of American smartphone industry at the present stage. To fulfill this study, 2,500 smartphone owners from the US have done an online survey provided by Strategy Analytics.

Americans 1 — Americans are tending to change their phone after 3 years or more

Americans, especially Baby Boomers, are more and more delaying in changing to new smartphones for at least three years. Besides, Samsung smartphones remain active for 16.5 months at least whilst it is 18 months for iPhone variants. The era of upgrading phones annually has passed. There is a decline in the international smartphone shipment statistics in the last few years. It is believed that the smartphone industry is going to suffer the lowest decrease ever in the coming months.

Americans 2 — Not every upgraded version of the smartphone is worthy enough for a purchase

David Kerr from company SVP indicated that there are numerous reasons for the Americans’ choices not to upgrade their smartphones as quickly as they did in years ago. The very first reason is that smartphone users perceive the latest versions with marginal upgrades are not worthy enough for them to change their current handsets.

Besides, the growing price of flagship handsets is verifying to be restrictive. Kerr does believe that 5G phone price is the potential barrier of consumer’s adoption despite realizing how necessary the updated feature is. Only 7% of people that SVP surveyed can pay more than $1000 for the latest smartphones and purchase 5G devices when they are accessible.

Americans 3 — Samsung is particularly favorable among Gen X-ers whereas Apple is Gen Z-ers’ choice

As the smartphone shipments are suffering a decline, tech giants such as Apple or Samsung are finding other solutions to enhance the revenue. New smart TVs, as well as music services, are released to solve the problem. However, consumers can purchase another Samsung or Apple’s smartphone earlier than expected if it is impressive enough. According to the study, smartphone users have intense brand loyalty: 70% of all surveyees were interested in rebuying new devices from previous brands. Samsung is particularly favorable among Gen X-ers whereas Apple is Gen Z-ers’ first choice.