> Annually, ~1.6 billion phones are shipped vs 275 million PCs.
This is most likely because people do not have to buy a PC every 3 years. Phones are treated as disposable items, whereas with a desktop, you can open it, clean it, change parts etc. I can even change the CPU in my laptop if I wanted to.
That’s one theory but one that doesn’t hold up by virtue of the fact that 83% of all humanity has a phone. The penetration for laptops/desktops never reached that high.
We can assume both as having reached steady state and that’s mostly replacement rate (not quite but almost).
Cell phones are more popular for obvious reasons: full access to internet at all times, TCO is drastically smaller across the board (upfront cheaper, cheaper internet, etc), and entire structures are built around them (many critical services go app first if not even app only).
I think you’re applying a very western bias in your analysis.
Both of which happen much more often than with laptops, at least in part because they are treated as being more disposable, but maybe more directly because they are smaller.
This is most likely because people do not have to buy a PC every 3 years. Phones are treated as disposable items, whereas with a desktop, you can open it, clean it, change parts etc. I can even change the CPU in my laptop if I wanted to.