Planned obsolescence of appliances: doomed from the start? 🚮

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Today, we consume more and more electronic products and are constantly renewing them. Due to the increasingly tough competition in this sector, companies are constantly on the warpath to provide new equipment that is even more efficient than the previous ones. The equation is simple for them: produce more to sell more. However, this has a limit because not all consumers are looking for the best product, the latest novelty or the most fashionable product. This is a big loss for companies because the aim is to sell and make a profit. This is why they encourage us to always renew our equipment through aggressive advertising, but for the less receptive customers, they rely on obsolescence.

Obsolescence is the depreciation of a material or equipment before its physical wear and tear. Simply put, it is when an object is out of date.

Our Appliances doomed to die ?

Planned obsolescence is an unfortunately common strategy for companies to plan the « premature death » of their products, forcing consumers to buy new ones.

This obsolescence is not just related to the usability of the device but is also a fashion issue. It is a process whereby a tool becomes obsolete for a user because the object in question is no longer fashionable or usable. This technique is particularly used by manufacturers of electronic devices (computers, telephones, consoles, etc.) and household appliances (refrigerators, washing machines, microwaves, etc.). The strategy of this company is therefore to plan from the design of the product, a decrease in its life span or its attractiveness, by creating a need to replace it by a new one.

How long do our appliances last ?

According to UFC-Que Choisir, the average lifespan of current household appliances nowadays varies between 6 and 9 years, compared to 10 to 12 years previously. For example, we have as lifespan

• between 5 and 8 years for a laptop,
• 8 years for a television,
• 4 years for a mobile phone,
• 10 years for a refrigerator.

On the other hand, we repair our appliances less and less because we have developed a replacement culture. According to the final report of a study conducted in 2012 by ADEME (Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’ENERGIE), only 44% of appliances that break down are currently repaired. Expenditure on repairs fell by 40% between 1997 and 2007 and continues to fall as fewer and fewer appliances are repaired. This is due to the increasingly complex design of appliances in order to limit the possibilities of replacing defective parts. A common example is the batteries in smartphones and tablets that are impossible to replace. They often have to be replaced or are too expensive. They are also designed not to exceed 300 to 400 charge cycles, which is barely two to three years of use.

A phenomenon that is not new

In 1924 in Geneva, Phoebus SA, an oligopoly of the major light bulb manufacturers in the industrialised countries, including Philips, General Electric and Osram, was founded. Its aim was to limit the life of incandescent light bulbs to 1,000 hours of use. The cartel aggregated statistics on the average life of bulbs and decided to fine manufacturers whose bulbs had a life of more than 1,500 hours. Their strategy was very effective, as the average life of bulbs dropped from 2,500 hours in 1924 to less than 1,500 hours two years later, before being further reduced to 1,000 hours.

The programmed obsolescence of our appliances is not new, there are several types that we can group into 2 categories: « functional obsolescence » and « evolutionary obsolescence ». We will develop these types of obsolescence in our next article on obsolescence as well as solutions to act against it.

Sources: La Librairie, UFC-Que Choisir