Why I don't upgrade
The mobile company I use stopped giving me an upgrade every couple of years. They keep offering "bargains" if I upgrade my plan. Understandably since I pay $45 CAN per month for unlimited texts, free long distance in Canada, and a cheap rate to the UK. Data? 400mb! I mainly use wifi, so use it when when I'm nowhere near a coffee shop and need to find my way because I'm lost.
I could go with buying a phone from them, but they don't seem interested. I have a Moto G8 currently (twin SIM) so my employer supplies up to 3G without questioning it, and I rarely use that anyway.
So the mobile industry is facing a crossroads. They basically have an everlasting income stream until something really disrupts access to the internet or whatever it will become. Up until now they had total control of how wide that revenue stream was. It was a smoke and mirrors deal with a manipulation of numbers and social engineering to make us believe something (normal sales behaviour)
Now customers have a certain amount of control of the width of that stream. At the same time they have caught themselves out. I can buy an reasonably good phone at a price less than they will charge. It will be mine from the start. As opposed to a monthly payment scheme which generally make me pay more for a limited range of phones and then try to make me buy some extra insurance.
Unless they really offer more value for what we are paying, then the big companies will stagnate. The may try to buy out upstarts and then raise prices again, but this is not a long term future.
They have to offer more or diversify for success imho.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
