Subscriptions were supposed to replace cable, then software, then heated seats, now phones. Funny how every innovation somehow ends with paying forever. If your business model needs me renting hardware I already carry everywhere, maybe the product isn’t improving fast enough to justify buying it?
With smartphones current prices and componants becoming more expensive they are realizing not a lot of people will buy a smartphone costing more than 1500 dollars. Especially when hardware is now good enough and people are starting to try to keep their phone as long as possible.
Making you rent your phone allow to hide how much it’s going to cost you and ensure them a steady cash income.
This!
Absolutely fucking not. Im not going to lease something that contains my private information ever.
You will own nothing and like it
I buy one smartphone per decade. Why would I want to lease it instead?
Think of the recurring opportunity for emails about price increases and downstream shareholder value!
And why burden yourself with ownership really
If you cannot control the software on the device — including the OS — then you never bought it. You paid for it, but you did not buy it and therefore do not own it.
I waited 8 year to get a newer phoner that was better than my previous phone in all respects at the same price. And even then it was mostly a convenience upgrade because my old phone was still working well.
Why the hell would it be worth it to lease a phone?
It depends a lot on how heavily you use your phones. I’m a heavy user and my batteries degrade heavily in 2-3 years. That leads to overheating, poor performance, and of course poor battery life.
The cost of replacing a battery is high for most phones. Sometimes higher than buying a new phone at a similar level of performance.
I’m doing 1-2 battery cycles per day. A light user might go through battery cycles at a quarter of my rate, and would not have those problems.
Was high. Europe changed the law <3
Seeing is believing, they probably find some loophole to fuck with the system.
They will try to male the battery in only compatible with onemodel or some kind like this.
An important thing to note here is that this isn’t anything new. This is what a significant amount of people have already been doing for years through their carrier. I don’t have any statistics on hand for this, but I personally don’t know a single person who has bought their phone outright. Everyone just leases their phone through their carrier around here, and upgrades as soon as they’re allowed. Hearing people complain about their cellphone plan cost increasing or poor cell service but being unable to switch carriers until their phone is paid off is a common thing to hear, as carriers have been using their phone leasing programs as a substitute for plan contracts for awhile now.
Leasing your phone through your carrier with the ability to buy or turn it in at the end of the term has been the name of the game for a very long time. What Apple and Samsung are doing is just trying to entice you into going direct through them instead of your carrier which is actually a good thing.
If you’ve been buying your phone outright then you shouldn’t use a program like this, but if you’ve been leasing your phone through your carrier I’d actually recommend switching to just doing the same thing directly through the manufacturer since it frees you up to switch carriers whenever you want.
I should have kept reading before posting. You basically said the same thing I did only better. 😂
Just like with cars. If you always have to have the latest and greatest, need to be seen with “the best”, replace your phone frequently then yes leasing is cheaper than buying. This would be stupid but people seem to do this
All companies see there are more profits to be made if you let consumers pay your company monthly instead of once, while you do not let them own anything. It is disgusting.
Did you pay your rent yesterday?
Yeah, because these companies buy up all houses while there’s a housing shortage, so I can’t afford buying one myself as the market is fucked. So I’m forced into subscription.
If your current plan is to buy the latest and greatest phone today, sell it in two years, and then buy a new top of the line phone, then Apple’s new lease program looks like an attractive option. They’ve priced it such that, over the course of the lease, you end up paying about the cost of purchasing the phone minus its resale value. Leasing looks convenient because it saves you from having to find a buyer.
It also keeps phones out of the secondary market, which benefits Apple. Off lease phones are used for warranty replacements, or sold as refurbished through official storefronts instead of person to person.
They want a future in which only they own property, and everyone else has to rent even the freaking air.
Maybe we just need more affordable phones.
I bought my Samsung for $240 CAD, brand new, not refurbished.
I can’t tell the difference from an expensive phone. Less camera lens? I don’t understand why other phones are $1000 to $2000. Processor speed? On a phone? I’m not running games on this thing except online chess. It plays YouTube without ads. It makes calls and sends texts.
I just don’t get it.
Thata why apple made their new cheap MacBook out of some phone processors but wont let us have a dual OS on the phone if we plug it into a monitor. Because its powerful enough to do that, but we wont buy both if we can.
So they’re coming to terms that nobody wants to buy what is basically the same kind of phone now a days for higher price… and so now they want to scam people by “upgrading” to what they think will be cheaper when in reality, it’s probably not…
Last phone was an iPhone 13. Current is the 17.
I don’t game so unless something catastrophic happens I don’t see myself needing to get a new phone for a very long time.
I have no interest running “AI”, either.
As former IT, most people seem to go from iphone 12/13 to 17 in the last year. Anecdotally, my wife and I went from S17s to $300 motorolas. My parents take the rotating yearly “upgrade” offer and seem fine with that
Depending on what moto does with graphene I may just need that instead.
