Couldn’t this be caused by people’s waning desire to buy the next big thing and keeping their devices longer? Rushing for the latest and greatest phone doesn’t feel as exciting as it used to. Laptops and TVs last half a decade or more now too.
Here is a repost of my post from December:
> Very true, I'd say a downgrade is the trend. I saw like 10+ people deciding to switch from "superphones" down to mid-range models, and even dumbphones for their new phones. People who had ultrabooks, often try Atom based notebooks and sufraces. The key deciding factor for such people, I think, is having a good screen and bearable ergonomics (no microscopic keyboards, or batteries.) The data I have access to tell that the "big screen, small CPU," is the category with the biggest year on year growth. Atom based 14 and 15 inchers are selling like hot cookies.
> As a person working in the industry, I can say that's a very visible trend. People switch their devices more due to battery and physical wear than actual need for more features.
> In that respect, things got very "Japanised" in respect that Japanese cellphone makers are often making new models every season with no real changes other than cosmetic.
> Japan is also the only developed market where "dumbphones" ever saw few upwards trends in last
Thinking of rich people in Asia only as those "nouveau riches" you see glitzing their wealth in London and Dubai is also a very Western-centric view.
You have to remember that "rich foreigner" population you see in the West is less than 1 percent of 1 percent of their home countries' populations, and those usually go apart even from their home country definition of "rich people class."
This is even more true for bigger emerging economies: in India and China, an even bigger portion of relatively rich people is completely content with staying at home, and not seeing a reason-d'etre in immigration to the West or imitating Western lifestyles.
I was recently on assignment in Kazakhstan, where I rented a room in possibly the most expensive coworking space in the country. All people around used mid-tier Taiwanese brands. And those were the people who drived LC200s or G-Wagons.
I had same feeling in Pakistan, where I met people making country's small, budding middle class. All of them successful young professionals, with nice cars, settled down families, and expensive houses in Bahria towns. None of them ever cared of not owning a 20th iPhone or a 5Ghz gaming PC. Most cared more about household appliances, and not having to obsess about specs of stuff they buy. They like practical, simple, well done stuff with some whiff of nice design taste added.
But the global smartphone market is quickly saturating, if it hasn’t already, and that is bound to affect numbers. Smartphone tech is also quickly nearing the flat end of the sigmoid curve, which naturally disincentivizes upgrading.
Mid-range phones now cost as much as previous "superphones". The iPhone launched at $499($615 after inflation) and the latest iPhone XS launched at $999.
But there’s no reason to assume that it’s that. Much more likely it’s simply a normal recession where the purchasing power goes down.
To iterate on that point, if people decided not to buy the latest and greatest phone, you would assume that in a growing economy they'll use the new available income to buy something else.
What do we want them to do? Spend more to keep the economy going or save more so they dont live paycheck to paycheck? Seems like we cant have it both ways.
[1] https://www.magnifymoney.com/blog/news/average-american-savi...
If you're living and you have No money, then it really really sucks (at least in the current day, the way everything is made you can't do anything without money, can't even have a home and live in peace without money)
It also depends on what you do with that saving. If you keep it under your mattress than it's as a whole bad for the economy since money (and hence value) is taken out of circulation.
But even if you invest that money than it might not be good for the economy. In theory, if there is less consumption then there are less things that are being sold. That means companies make less profit, which in turn means investments yield less value. If enough consumption is reduced, saving could even result in negative value (I.E. you lose money).
In fact during a depression it is common for governments to artificially increase consumption to boost the economy (whether by public works or reducing interest rates).
Of course those are extremes. In reality less consumption could turn into a better and perhaps more equal economy or it could turn into a vicious cycle and a depression.
Historically speaking though, reduced consumption is usually a precursor to reduced economical growth and accompanies a depression and not the opposite.
Considering housing by itself is over 20% of spending, and that >60% of the of population has fixed spending (either own their house outright, have an existing mortgage, are under rent control, or are homeless and don't live in shelters) that only marginally increases in cost per year -- it is STARTLING to me that spending as a whole is growing by 5.3%. Spending on rent only grew by 3.3% and that is largely NOT fixed. Spending on housing grew by 10.4%!!! And almost 80% of that category is fixed!!! It's insane! That means, when people buy new houses, they are spending WAY more on housing than they were before. And it can't be more clear, really. 65% of home buyers are essentially "trading" homes -- that is selling their existing to buy another. If they make up the majority of purchasers, and prices are up 10.4% -- they're likely spending more on housing. A lot more!
I'm no economist, but that seems to have every indication of speculation to me.
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