Do we have to buy a phone?

There is something I have been telling mobile operators in Turkey for a long time:

Don't just sell me a communication service. Give me my phone, too.

I already pay a mobile communication bill every month. That service has little meaning without my phone, and my phone has little meaning without the service. So why am I managing these as two separate economic relationships?

I buy the phone from one place. I finance it from another. I get my line from a different company. The device's insurance is elsewhere, its warranty is elsewhere, and selling the old phone a few years later is entirely my problem.

Instead, what if my operator told me this:

“This is your phone, this is your communication package, this is your insurance, and this is your total monthly payment. Bring the phone back in two years, and get a new one.”

From my perspective, there is no problem at all.

In fact, I think this is the model that should have been in place for years.

Various versions of this have been tried in Turkey. Operators sold devices, added the device cost to the bill, and created different financing models. However, the credit system, legislation, and certain practical issues in Turkey have made this model extremely complicated over time.

Moreover, there were serious problems in the past regarding the credit assessment side of this system. There were periods when even very small delays in phone bills could affect a consumer's credit history. Mixing a communication service with device financing unnecessarily complicated a model that should have been simple.

At the point we have reached today, spreading the cost of an expensive phone over a long term using classic consumer credit logic is already quite difficult.

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question then.

We need to discuss not how to finance the phone, but why we are forced to buy the phone in the first place.

Because the phone is no longer the phone we used to buy.

We used to buy a phone and use it for years. The phone was largely an independent product.

Today, the device in our hands is a terminal for a collection of services.

It has cloud storage.

It has a music service.

It has a video service.

It has apps.

It has artificial intelligence services.

It has a mobile communication service.

It has insurance.

And in the middle of all this, there is quite expensive hardware that needs to be technologically renewed every few years.

In such a world, is owning the phone really indispensable?

I am not so sure about that.

In fact, even thinking about the issue solely through the phone might be wrong.

Companies like Kiralarsın in Turkey are implementing a broader version of this. You can rent phones, you can rent tablets, you can rent computers. A model is emerging where, instead of buying different electronic devices, you can use them for as long as you need them.

Garanti BBVA is also one of the examples moving in the same direction with its phone rental model.

Actually, what is emerging here is not just a new payment method.

Our relationship with technological products is changing.

We find it perfectly natural to lease a car. We don't think that the cars, computers, or other equipment used by a company must necessarily be owned by that company.

So why should an individual user be any different?

Does the computer I use at home necessarily have to be mine?

The phone?

The tablet?

The game console?

All of these have one common feature: their technological lifespan can be shorter than their economic lifespan.

A five-year-old computer might still work, but it might no longer do the job I want it to do well enough. My three-year-old phone might be in perfect condition, but it might not run new technological features.

Moreover, artificial intelligence is now entering this equation.

As new-generation artificial intelligence systems run on the device, the processor, Neural Engine, and especially RAM become more important. Even if a phone is in physically perfect condition, it may not have enough hardware to run new AI features a few years later.

We used to change phones because the screen was broken, the battery was dead, or it had become too slow.

Now, a phone that works perfectly well might reach the end of its technological life because it cannot run new AI capabilities.

An interesting situation arises here:

The device does not age, its capability ages.

This is one of the reasons why the rental model makes sense to me.

If technological change is going to shorten the device renewal period, is it really necessary for the consumer to bear the entire ownership cost of the device every time?

Perhaps it is more rational to pay for the time we use them instead of buying them like fixed assets.

Let's take this even further.

I think that in the future, rather than renting devices one by one, a kind of personal technology subscription might emerge.

Instead of making separate purchasing decisions for my phone, computer, and tablet, I could subscribe to a technology package.

For example, a package that renews my phone every two years, my computer every three years, and my tablet every four years.

When one of the devices breaks, the service problem becomes the problem of the company providing the service, not mine. The insurance would be included in the package. I wouldn't have to bother calculating the second-hand value of the old device. When the usage period ends, the device is taken back, refurbished, and goes to a second user.

As for me, I buy not the device itself, but continuous access to technology.

Actually, we have already accepted this in the software world.

We use the cloud instead of buying servers.

We use software as a service instead of buying software.

We subscribe to a music service instead of buying music albums.

We subscribe to platforms instead of building a film collection.

Why should hardware be any different?

Moreover, in the age of artificial intelligence, the economic justification for this could become even stronger. As artificial intelligence develops, the processor, memory, and specialized AI hardware will age faster. A working computer or phone could become inadequate for new AI models.

In this case, the real value for the consumer might not be the ownership of the device, but uninterrupted access to current technology.

I am not against such a model.

On the contrary, if it is priced correctly and designed in a way that does not lock the consumer into a single company, I find it quite logical.

In fact, this might be exactly the broader version of what I have been expecting from operators for years.

Don't just sell me a phone line.

Give me my phone, too.

If you want, give me my computer, too.

Give me my tablet, too.

You manage the insurance, maintenance, renewal, and the second-hand life cycle.

Let me see all of this from a single place and, if possible, pay a single bill.

But there is one thing we must not give up here.

Giving up ownership is not the same thing as giving up freedom of choice.

The rental model should be a tool to make the consumer's life easier, not to lock them in. The contract should be transparent. The total cost should be clearly visible. Early exit conditions should be reasonable. Normal signs of wear and tear should not create surprise bills later. And the user should be able to switch to another operator, another brand, or another ecosystem whenever they want.

I don't have to own my phone.

I don't have to own my computer, either.

Or my tablet.

But I should be able to decide which device I use, how long I use it, and when I switch to another system.

Because perhaps in the future, what matters will not be how many technological products we own.

It will be what technology we can access when we need it.