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Comment by tkiolp4 | Hacker News Reader

I don’t see the point in releasing new iPhones every year (besides making more money, ofc). I mean, if I buy a 1000 EUR phone today, I’m not planning on replacing it the next year (or in 3 years or so). So, as a person who has an iPhone already (and that will last me a few years more), I don’t get excited anymore with these releases.

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The two most obvious answers are

A) Not everyone buys phones at the same time you do and if the only iPhone on sale 2 weeks ago was the iPhone 12, they’d have a lot of unhappy customers (and used / returned phone) when they released the 15.

B) Product iteration, the same reason (and benefits) why so many software devs stopped rolling 2-3 years of updates into single big releases.

Are you suggesting we all upgrade at the same time? I like the yearly tick, and my upgrade year is probably out of sync with yours.

In the early days of 2 year contracts and half year batteries there was no out of sync, and that's a very different environment to release a product into. Even someone who still buys the best for themselves and hands their phones down is probably sitting the average year out.

I honestly don’t know anyone who buys a new phone every year. I knew one person who would get a new Samsung every year, but he has stopped doing that now. My experience goes way back to the Nokia 3210 era.

This is in the UK. I’m on a 3 year cycle with iPhones, buying a second hand one-year-old model and keeping it for 3 years.

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