> And buying the newest thing every year is kinda frowned upon here in the EU now.

Is there any evidence that Europeans aren’t buying new phones at the same rate that they used to?

Some sources say so, e.g. "Declining Replacement Cycles Among Consumers" on https://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-sma...

And https://www.unibocconi.it/en/news/disposable-smartphones-tri... has replacement cycles in Italy going up.

Anecdotally, 2023/24 all media in Germany was full of ads for shops trading refurb phones. Most of those talked lower prices, but some mentioned sustainability.

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lurk2 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The first article does not look to be informative; it values the EU smartphone market at around 465 million USD, which is impossibly low. If you assume a smartphone is valued at $1,000, a market of that size would only amount to 465,000 devices sold; this is around 0.01% of the EU’s population.

The second article links to a paper which appears to be more informative (though it has not been peer reviewed):

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5117319

Notably:

> For example, in the United States, the average expected life span (replacement cycle length) of consumer and enterprise smartphones was 2.67 and 2.54 years, respectively, in 2023, while in the UK almost 30% of surveyed consumers use their smartphone up to two years and 41% up to 4 years.

and

> Furthermore, evidence shows that European, American and Chinese consumers have reduced the replacement rate of their smartphones, increasing their average life cycle (see Figure 1). These data suggest that consumer preferences are changing, and new opportunities arise for companies who want to find new profitable ways to meet the needs of their customers.

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ZiiS 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It is standard to list market size data in units of $1,000; i.e. that report is 465 billion USD.

	▲	lurk2 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Those numbers would be more realistic, amounting to around a thousand dollars spent per each EU citizen per year; this seems a little high if replacement rates are hovering around 3 years on average, but not impossible like the other figure. What I don’t understand is why it would be written “USD 448.87 million.” This convention is common in accounting and finance as well, but they usually make an indication of it in a column header.