Living paycheck to paycheck doesn’t mean there isn’t room in there budget to do anything else. They may spend $20 less per month on food to buy a phone. Do you really think that households who are making six figures “who are stretched thin” have no discretionary income to reallocate?
If given a choice between every single citation I could find on the internet and your anecdotes of what your family does, which one do you think is more reliable?
I already cited why I don’t believe the sources I could find as well as those you provided are reliable of a common experience as they’re clearly designed to be market research among those people who regularly upgrade smart phones. That’s a much more useful metric if you’re a smart phone company than a census style survey. They aren’t trying to make a social statement but optimize their release cadence. What people do who don’t upgrade regularly or buy their products new aren’t interesting to them, so they aren’t designing these surveys to capture people not already in their product cadence orbit. But, I suspect I can guess which you consider more reliable.
I’d not the median household income is 70k, which means half of all households make less than that. The median personal income is $40k.
Again, we aren’t getting remotely close to 99% of people are upgrading every 2-4 years.
> I already cited why I don’t believe the sources I could find as well as those you provided are reliable of a common experience as they’re clearly designed to be market research among those people who regularly upgrade smart phones
On the entire internet every source cites 2-3 years but you choose not to believe it because it doesn’t support your worldview?
And in the US, even the MVNOs that are targeted toward lower income buyers subsidize phones where you get them for “free”.
But you’re telling me on the entire internet you can’t find one statistic that supports your claim?
If given a choice between every single citation I could find on the internet and your anecdotes of what your family does, which one do you think is more reliable?