A look into ‘Planned Obsolescence’ in Tech
Ever wonder why you rarely upgrade your laptops while the phone in your hand keeps changing at the drop of a hat? You could technically buy a laptop with the same price of a flagship phone now. Laptop prices also don’t drop as much as mobiles, do they? Why?
Well they would, if their ‘cycle time’ was as less as mobile phones. Laptops are mostly long-term investments, while mobiles are relatively short-term ones.
An average cash-conscious user would change mobiles once in 2 years max. A tech-geek would probably do it every year. Most tech companies release products that remain flagships for a year. So any mobile that is older than 2 years is automatically considered ‘out-dated’. While I am not a fan of this , this is the reality. Phones are made with products that wear out sooner, they are more susceptible to breakage and wear n tear. The software updates are intentionally planned to slow them down as they age and prompt users to replace them quicker. In the tech community, this is called ‘Planned obsolescence’. So when the cycle times are lower, the price drops are higher. The ‘price drop’ is in itself a fad. They price the phone around 4–5 times the cost price on launch and subsequently bring it down, giving an impression of a good deal. Case in point — the LG G Flex was launched in India at 70K INR (not at all kidding). In 5 weeks, the price dropped to 19K. More recently LG infamously dropped the price of the LG G8X from 55K to 20K Rupees. Of course there are notable exceptions like the iPhones, Samsung’s ‘S’ series, Nokia Camera phones etc.,
The laptop story is different, laptops are more personal products, you rarely take them out, you rarely encounter any breakage or wear and tear. The cycle times are huge. The mother boards, chipsets and RAMs are rarely outdated within one or two years. So even if the investment is high, it is expected to last you 3–4 years minimum. The build of most of the laptop makers like Dell, HP, Apple, Sony are all pretty sturdy — in fact most of them are built like tanks! So the mantra for laptops is — invest high, forget it — till it pretty much literally breaks down. Most of the drawbacks of mobiles aren’t applicable here.
So price drops do happen , but are not obvious and quite rare. Even hardcore tech geeks rarely replace their laptops or PCs often. These are people who perform app creations, heavy duty photo and video editing, mind you! Another point is that small manufacturers like Xiomi, Micromax,etc., do not have a high success rate in Laptops since people usually prefer better brand names when it comes to Laptops.
Case in point — A high-end Dell XPS laptop that I got in 2011 is still kicking ass. My dad is still using it(with an SSD upgrade). I had the HTC wildfire(384MB RAM) at that time! Since that I have had — Note N7000, Lumia 1320,Nexus 5, LG G4, Lenovo Zuk Z2, Moto G5 and till I ended up with the Poco F1 now.
