In 2004 about 315 million working PCs were retired in North America…
In 2005 more than 100 million cell phones were discarded in the United States.
That is from Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, by Giles Slade.
Discard facts of the day
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In most other developped countries you would expect the ratio to “favor” the cell phones in about the same factor as PC in the US…
Then again I (as Swiss) have multiple PCs but usually only one cell phone at a time.
My first thought was that computers and phones shouldn’t be compared. Computers really are much more functional and useful now than five years ago, while cell phones just have silly bells and whistles no one needs. But then I realized I don’t have any good reason to think that. Sure, I have the newest Apple laptop, but for my needs as an academic, is it really any better? Not much, I suppose. (My old laptop died, though, and fixing it would have cost 1/2 its market value, so that’s my excuse for buying a new laptop instead.) I just don’t happen to enjoy cellular phones the way I enjoy my laptop.
One reason working computers are retired is that companies find it too expensive to support a large range of PC’s or of Windows versions. Many companies have programs _requiring_ the replacement of perfectly working computers that aren’t fast enough for the latest version of windows. It is similar to the way companies like JetBlue can beat the old airlines by having to do maintenance on a much smaller number of airplane models.
And with PC’s, the companies can often donate the old computers to schools/charities, which will also face excessively high maintenance costs.
The 315 million PC retirements sound really high. Assuming 2 PCs per capita, that is a 50% turnover. I still have my PC from 7 years ago (and it needs to be put down).
I’m posting this comment on a computer assembled from components pulled from office park dumpsters. The same is true of my wee wifey’s PC and our print server. Retirement does not mean death.
SIM cards are a feature of the GSM standard. All US GSM providers (Cingular (including the old AT&T network), T-Mobile and many smaller local providers (I know of three in Wisconsin) all therefore supply phones which use them. I do not see how SIM cards, isolated from a business model, would influence phone turnover. In Italy cellular providers sell the SIM and connectivity while phone retailers sell the handsets. It is not uncommon for a person to have multiple phones and switch between them for fashion or function reasons. This could easily result in a higher discard rate.
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