WHY YOUR ELECTRONIC DEVICES HAVE SUCH A SHORT LIFESPAN
The regularity with which the average buyer is buying, upgrading, and replacing electronic products is increasing at an increasing rate due to planned obsolescence. Computers, phones, TVs, printers, and technological gadgets in general are having increasingly shorter lifespans, either through hardware malfunctioning or simply by becoming functional but unfashionable.
In a lot of cases, manufacturers urge users to upgrade or buy newer products rather than repair or keep using ‘unfashionable’ products through a variety of tactics, like carefully scheduling their useful lifespans or trendiness. Planned obsolescence has become an exasperating but inescapable feature of the modern tech world.
What is planned obsolescence, and how does it work?
Also known as built-in obsolescence or premature obsolescence, planned obsolescence is a policy where a product is designed or manufactured with purposefully frail features like hardware, firmware, or processes.
This gives the product an artificially limited life span and makes it obsolete after a certain predetermined amount of time has elapsed. The product’s functionality either decreases, stops functioning altogether, or is considered unfashionable. In short, the product is designed to break or go out of style quickly and easily.
When a superior product model is introduced, consumers will naturally favour and gravitate toward the newer model, therefore bolstering demand.
The purpose of such policies and tactics is to generate sales volumes by encouraging or even forcing repeat purchases because the lifespan of a product has been deliberately shortened, necessitating regular replacements or upgrades.
For planned obsolescence to work, the product manufacturer usually has to enjoy strong brand loyalty, i.e., customers have to be likely to buy the same product or from the same manufacturer. It works best in oligopolistic arrangements where a few companies or brands exert significant control over a given market as they can collude to control prices to their benefit.
Information asymmetry is also vital for the vendor or manufacturer, who knows the product’s life span, versus the customer, who doesn’t. In competitive markets, product lifespans tend to increase in order to maintain customer loyalty and retention.
Types of planned obsolescence
Contrived obsolescence
This is where a product is designed to deteriorate or fail on purpose. The product’s durability and lifetime are shortened by design, with each component made to that specification before it’s released into the market.
Some strategies can include using inferior materials; for instance, using cheap plastic in places where metal would have made it more robust and durable. Smartphones or hand-held electronic devices with regular usage have a short life expectancy due to fragile batteries or materials that can get easily damaged from minor forms of abnormal usage.
An example can be the display screen of a mobile phone with substandard ribbon cables that deteriorate quickly, making the screen or even the whole device useless and thus in need of a replacement sooner than the user might have needed or wanted.
Another example that is rife is with batteries. Over time, batteries lose their ability to store charge, which has an adverse effect on a device’s functionality. A tactic that manufacturers use is to make the device in such a way that the end-user is unable to replace the battery, like phones or electric toothbrushes with permanent, in-built lithium-ion batteries. While the device is completely functional, the dead battery makes the whole device useless, thus giving it a lifespan that’s only as long as the fragile battery.
Some devices come with tightly sealed covers where an attempted battery replacement would require manual force that would induce permanent damage. This is especially true where the battery is glued to the motherboard or its terminals are soldered to the main board and have to be pried away.
Some tactics dissuade users from carrying out repairs by making them either impossible or economically unviable. Such products are designed to be impossible to service; for instance, factory-sealed disposable cameras, where a customer would need to purchase a new one after use.
Manufacturers make parts either unavailable, exorbitant, or very hard to replace, making a new purchase more convenient and economical. An example can be inkjet printers’ with replaceable print heads that eventually fail, but the replacement print head is way too expensive to not consider acquiring a new printer. The cost of repairs almost matches the cost of a whole new system.
Perceived obsolescence
Stylistic obsolescence, or obsolescence of desirability, is when manufacturers redesign a product so that it appears more fashionable and trendy, which spurs customers to purchase trendier products. This is particularly efficient for tech products that can have a high aesthetic and functional appeal, like smartphones and smart devices, or those that can act as status symbols.
By continually redesigning, face-lifting, and introducing more bells and whistles or discontinuing older models and designs, vendors and manufacturers can guarantee continuous sales despite the older ‘unfashionable’ products still being fully functional.
Smartphone manufacturers can release a slightly updated model every six to seven months, making one-year-old products seem like they’re two generations older.
Systemic obsolescence
A product can become obsolete when continuous development and redesign of the system in which it’s used make the original product difficult to work with or operate. Changing the design of connectors, jacks, or screws so they cannot be operated on by existing tools and equipment is one way.
For instance, older input ports on PC motherboards like serial, VGA, and parallel ports have been replaced by HDMI, USB, and Display ports.
Programmed obsolescence
This is especially common with printer manufacturers, where programmed smart microchips are embedded into ink cartridges to make them stop working after a certain number of prints or time has elapsed, even though the cartridge might still have enough usable ink or could be refilled.
This is a deliberate artificial disabling of a product where no hardware or software component has to fail for the product to actually stop working other than just the elapsing of time.
This is rife with software applications where older versions, even though they’re still operational, are made unserviceable until newer versions are purchased.
In some instances, such upgrades, like security patches for applications that include payment and banking transactions, can be extremely valuable, and software may deliberately lock out users with older, less secure versions to protect all parties involved.
This can also adversely affect users with older devices that might not be compatible with newer software that has no backward hardware compatibility, which would force users to purchase newer hardware or purchase firmware that would make older hardware compatible with newer software versions.
Software vendors can also deliberately drop support for older but still fully functional software versions, forcing users to purchase newer versions. This can be done by disabling updates for older software versions, sometimes because the cost of maintaining and supporting the older versions exceeds the revenue generated from the old software version itself.
Legal obsolescence
This refers to the obsolescence of a product through legislation, by discontinuation of support or manufacture of a product, or by subsidizing the purchase of newer technologies to encourage uptake and abandonment of older technologies. This can be seen in the electric vehicle versus gasoline or diesel vehicle industry.
Some countries or cities have started banning older diesel vehicles by introducing low-emission zones.
Proponents of shorter replacement cycles argue that obsolescence benefits users as it leads to ever-improving products, since a newer version of a product always comes with an improvement over the older version.
This can also be beneficial to the economy as it encourages consumption, thus contributing to economic growth and jobs.
Opponents argue that short replacement cycles are wasteful, exploitative for customers, and detrimental to the environment.
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