
Have you kept up with this week’s smartphone news?
IDC reported last week that smartphone sales fell by 3.6% (to 331.2 million units) in Q2 and that global shipments declined for the seventh successive quarter.
The mining required to extract aluminum, cobalt, copper, gold, palladium, platinum, silver, tantalum, tin, tungsten and other metals is extremely resource-intensive.
The overly rapid adoption of new phones and insufficient reuse of used phones lead to incredible waste, resulting in toxic metals in landfills, microplastic in the ocean and dangerous disassembly for recycled phones, often by children.
What’s driving the decline in smartphone shipments and manufacturing is good news: People are hanging on to their smartphones longer.
The average length of time iPhone users are holding on to their phones before upgrading, for example, has moved from three years to four, according to one analyst.