Smartphones on average are faster than ever, the two-year contract is all but dead, and the upgrades between phone generations have, in many cases, become less stark.
Add it all up, and you get this chart from Statista, which shows how smartphone buyers across America and Europe are holding onto their phones longer. According to a recent report from the analyst firm Kantar Worldpanel, American users held onto their smartphones for an average of 22.7 months before upgrading in 2016, up by nearly two months from 2014. The difference is just as big in many major European markets.
The trend doesn’t quite carry over to China, however, where the smartphone market is still a little more fluid, online shopping is more prevalent, and lower-cost phones from companies like Oppo and Vivo are especially popular.
