Yearly global smartphone sales are around 300 million.

... Where are you getting that? The iPhone _alone_ sells about 200 million units a year.

There are almost 5 billion smartphone users; sales of 300 million a year would imply that those are only replaced every 16 years, which is obviously absurd.

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oblio 3 days ago | parent [-]

Oh, that was quarterly: https://canalys.com/newsroom/global-smartphone-market-q2-202...

On a separate note, speaking of the average lifespan of a phone, I'm fairly sure that with how expensive they're becoming, smartphone lifespans are increasing. Especially with:

* hardware performance largely plateauing (not in the absolute sense, that of "this phone can do most of what I need")

* the EU pushing for easy battery and screen replacement and also for 7 years of OS updates

* the vast majority of phones having cases to protect against physical damage

	▲	rsynnott 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, peak sales per year were a few years back. People are definitely keeping them longer than they used to.