A Mobile (and a planet) with fewer new mobiles: price, covid and sustainability interrupt the party

With the telephone obsolete and much honor, the post-pandemic consumer is resistant to change -or at least to the expense that it entails-.

Without going any further, the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona held this week paradoxically has not stood out for its mobile news.

In

is rejecting joint fairs like this -next week it will show a new catalog on its own-;

Sony also stopped presenting terminals at the Catalan event, the largest in the world in telecommunications;

Samsung went to Barcelona with the news released a month before;

Huawei is surrounded by US vetoes and tries to promote Honor... Realme and Poco (Xiaomi) have presented a product at a congress that, in other circumstances, might not give them so much prominence.

In Spain the data is not revealed, but the companies calculate that the high-end of smartphones already lasts

.

The same can be seen in other countries:

.

Last year, in Italy this group accounted for 49%, 13 points lower than in 2016;

for the UK market, the decline has been even steeper, down 14 points to 52%, according to Deloitte's TMT 2022 Predictions report.

Savings during the pandemic, either due to a lack of supply or due to a lower purchasing power of demand, undoubtedly bear a large part of the responsibility.

Running into mobiles with prices higher than a thousand euros does not help either.

"A powerful reason to keep a smartphone for longer has been the high cost of new devices, which can mean three years of amortization compared to the two years that were previously required," says the Deloitte study.

The price gains weight as a claim.

In view of the sectoral data compiled by Oliver Wyman, users in European countries consider the quality of the telecommunications service less important than before, while giving greater importance to cost.

In nations like Germany, the roles have even been reversed and

.

Spain is a particularly competitive market in telecommunications, where Telefónica (with O2 and Tuenti), Orange (with Jazztel and Simyo), Vodafone (with Lowi), MásMóvil (with Yoigo, Pepephone, Lycamobile, Virgin telco, Euskaltel, R and Telecable coexist). ), and also Digi or Finetwork.

This ecosystem irremediably influences the field of terminals.

"There is pressure from the demand to get cheaper options and the number of

lowers prices," summarizes asked by EL MUNDO Lorenzo Milans del Bosch, partner of Oliver Wyman expert in this sector: "The marginal increases of a terminal to another are getting smaller. Is it really so noticeable to go from iPhone 12 to 13?

Senior executives from different companies consulted during the Mobile corroborate this.

"Phones are less revolutionary now," says one;

"The

effect costs more," says another.

In a scenario already altered by Covid-19, the logistics crisis in the supply chain has weighed down the international trade in terminals even more, given the shortage of semiconductors.

As reported by the IDC consultancy,

, compared to both periods of the previous year.

Smartphone, second hand

The reconditioning of telephones is already a reality, for example through the French company Back Market, a terminal manufacturer that advocates fair trade.

The so-called

which consists of the professionalization of the sale of second-hand products, introduces the guarantee that the products have been examined and conveniently repaired by experts.

As Wallapop's latest campaign in favor of sustainability says, "What's done is done" and if something has already polluted, at least it can be reused.

Last Wednesday, Orange and Samsung announced an extension of their strategic partnership in reducing waste and extending the life of mobile devices, among other commitments.

"The life cycle of the product is increasing. The concern for sustainability is not only a question of image, but of optimization of resources", argues David Alonso, director of the mobility business of Samsung Electronics Iberia.

Internationally, this manufacturer collects fishing nets in the Indian Ocean and transforms them into polyamide resins that end up in, for example, the Galaxy S22.

"Interest in the refurbished terminal has increased exponentially over a sustained period, so it is not due to one-off events, but to

" reflects Luz Usamentiaga, General Director of Regulation, Public Affairs and Sustainability at Orange Spain. .

"Last November we launched a campaign in which, for each terminal deposited in the store, we planted a tree. We tripled the volume of terminals collected," details this directive from an operator that provides more terminals in Spain than the rest of

together.

Starting this spring, Vodafone will have an

for customers to exchange their damaged phones

, with the aim of recycling or donating them, under an agreement with the French firm Recommerce.

"At Vodafone we are working in three ways to contribute to sustainability: that the customer always brings the old terminal, that second-hand phones are reused and that phones are enhanced with biodegradable components, provided that the latter does not impact the price" , exposes Sonia Romero, responsible for Purchasing and terminal portfolio at Vodafone Spain.

In May last year, some of the major European operators adopted the Eco Rating labeling system to identify the most sustainable phones.

Thus, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica, Telia, Vodafone and Proximus reveal the environmental impact of mobile phones according to their production, transport, use and disposal.

According to data from the United Nations, the weight of electronic waste generated annually exceeds that of the Great Wall of China, the vastest creation of man on the face of the Earth.

In 2022, around

(the most popular devices on the planet) will be in operation, generating 146 million tons of CO2 or equivalent emissions (CO2e), but it is pertinent to differentiate:

, 1,400 million of the total;

while 11% comes from the other 3.1 billion phones already in existence, 4% is due to the repair of old phones and around 1% is linked to end-of-life processes, including recycling.

go gold

Other data from Deloitte completes the portrait of the main culprit of contamination, which turns out to be the newly acquired brand new terminal: a new smartphone implies 85 kilograms of emissions in its first year of use and 95% of that figure is due to shipping, to manufacturing and, before all this, to the extraction of raw materials.

In fact,

, they calculate in the United Nations.

Russia, which has recently invaded Ukraine and is subject to severe economic sanctions, is precisely the main producer of the last of those metals.

Phone makers avoid publicly acknowledging that people are taking longer to buy new units, although they do boast that they are lengthening the life cycle of their products.

The commercial policies of the operators give clear clues about this process:

, precisely because it is expected that the consumer will keep his device longer.

To achieve this, battery life is the most important variable, they point out at Kantar, and indeed, regardless of amperage, artificial intelligence is already helping to extend cycles.

But it would be useless to keep a phone if its operating system is out of date, an obsolescence that is also being corrected.

"Software support for smartphones is offered for a longer time," they warn at Deloitte.

The phenomenon will go further: at the beginning of 2022, the duration of each mobile software version varied between three and five years depending on the provider, but by 2025 the pressure of competition will have stretched that term to at least five years.

Last month, it became known that Samsung had reached an agreement with Google to guarantee

on its phones .

"In the US it is likely that all smartphone providers must offer security updates for five years from 2023," says Deloitte, and in the European Union voices are already being heard calling for the deadline to reach seven, for example in Germany .

The telephone irremediably entered our lives;

now, he is also reluctant to abandon them.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

• Coronavirus

• Telephone

• Barcelona

• wallapop

• Android

• Google

• Ukraine

• Russia

• Mobile World Congress

• Sony

• huawei

• Xiaomi

• THE WORLD

• covid 19

• Companies

Álvarez-Pallete (Telefónica): "What is happening in Ukraine reminds us that technology has no value"

CataloniaPere Aragonès once again dodges the greeting to King Felipe VI at the opening of the Mobile World Congress

Economy Ryanair increases its commitment to Spain with more routes and the project of a pilot school

See links of interest

• Last News

• map ukraine

• Foster children Ukraine

• Topics

• Work calendar 2022

• Time change

• best colleges

• Red Star - Bitci Baskonia

• Real Betis - Rayo Vallecano

• Barca - AS Monaco