Cellphone As A Service

A cell phone. Also, not competitive.

There are over 300 million cell phones in the US. Given that most of those phones will only have a working life of under 3 years, that's a lot of e-waste. Even worse, because of the construction of most cell phones, recycling the materials is really difficult. Consumers (and thus manufacturers) want cell phones to be as small and compact as possible. So, the integration of metal, plastic, glass, circuit board, etc. is very specialized and not easy to unmanufacture.

This isn't an easy problem to solve. As cell phones get better, faster and smaller, consumers will continue to toss a lightly used obsolete brick for the next new shiny smartphone. It's not reasonable to expect consumers to settle for a substandard cell, so we need a better solution to deal with this ongoing problem. It'd be nice if there was a solid business model in it too.

To start, someone needs to take ownership of the full lifecycle of these devices. What I'm talking about is cradle to cradle (C2C) instead of cradle to grave. Given that there isn't barely any effort in handling the end of this lifecycle, cradle to grave is the going paradigm.

Few companies exhibit C2C thinking better than Herman Miller. They design office furniture with the end of the useful life in mind from the beginning. Commonly, furniture can be refurbished or dismantled and recycled. While it's probably really difficult to make a consumer electronic with this in mind, putting the ownership of the end of the lifecycle on the manufacturer gives them the incentive to work on this problem.

One way to do that would be to restructure cell phone contracts. Instead of selling cell phones with a contract to subsidize it, why not simply rent them to consumers? A couple things work a lot better with this scheme. One, if a consumer is willing to pay the premium price, they get the top-end phone, no matter when it shows up. No more waiting for your two-year contract to expire. Then, tiered pricing can allow for those that don't want or need the top end to get the leftovers that do. This also adds value in avoiding the dreaded 2-year contract. If you want to quit, turn in your phone and move on.

Why would a cell phone provider want to do this? Well, instead of making money constantly churning out more sales (a growth model), they make money by providing good service. Ultimately, they can remix and reuse the devices whenever a new one comes out. So, they are able to provide a better service at a premium price and have a lower capital cost (due to reusing the waterfalled devices).

It gets better. Now that the carrier has ownership of the devices, they now have incentive to push for better designs with respect to C2C. They could take the reuse idea a step further. Commonly, the most expensive part in a phone is the screen. And, with a simple glass refinish, could be made as good as new from an obsolete phone. The biggest thing keeping this from happening today is that the phones aren't designed with this in mind. With a realignment of incentives, it wouldn't take long for carriers and manufactures to figure this issue out.

And, in the end would reduce e-waste considerably, because the carriers and manufacturers who do it best make the most money. Wouldn't it be nice if the big bad tech companies start fighting for the environment and get rewarded for doing it right?