> Why on earth are we leasing phones now???

Same reason some people lease cars:

* want the New Thing regularly

* are happier with OpEx than CapEx (can be handy for business/accounting reasons)

Well, lets do math:

- from this thread: iPhone 17 pro max would be $1199 to buy (~1273 with tax) or $34.99 for 24 months totaling $839.76. So would cost 433.33 at the end of the lease to keep it

If you upgrade your phone every 1-2 years then what you pay for the phone is something like "full cost - optimistic trade-in value". I see no reason not to do if you know you going to upgrade.

The market must be stalling to the point the companies can't afford to innovate anymore.

Or at least that's how I understand why Samsung recently introduced literal first-party program for renting phones and is advertising it heavily. The flagships got too expensive.

I'm a little confused on why anyone would pay this much for a phone. (Although if you consider it conspicuous consumption that happens to work as a phone, I can believe that.)

That’s tame when people are leasing literal meals with klarna

money number must go up?