The limiting attribute of the smartphone market isn't the release cycle. Even large international corporations find it hard to compete in the smartphone market.
The biggest problem is that a sustainable smartphone product wouldn't sell very well and the market is heavily based on selling incremental changes and flashy non-features as groundbreaking innovations.
I'd say one of the biggest differences between sectors where coops do well and where they don't is that the latter tend to be sectors where the value proposition of the product is almost entirely driven by marketing and the products are only profitable because they're disposable.
Apple doesn't make a profit from selling you an iPhone every five years. Apple makes a profit from selling (lowercase-i) influencers an iPhone at least once a year to convince everyone else they should really cycle out their current model long before it's actually obsolete.
Another important factor of course is that coops tend to focus on local communities and smartphones are almost entirely manufactured overseas at this point (speaking from an American or European POV). It's hardly a coop if 99% of the workers involved are working for non-coop subcontractors in a different country.
The biggest problem is that a sustainable smartphone product wouldn't sell very well and the market is heavily based on selling incremental changes and flashy non-features as groundbreaking innovations.
I'd say one of the biggest differences between sectors where coops do well and where they don't is that the latter tend to be sectors where the value proposition of the product is almost entirely driven by marketing and the products are only profitable because they're disposable.
Apple doesn't make a profit from selling you an iPhone every five years. Apple makes a profit from selling (lowercase-i) influencers an iPhone at least once a year to convince everyone else they should really cycle out their current model long before it's actually obsolete.
Another important factor of course is that coops tend to focus on local communities and smartphones are almost entirely manufactured overseas at this point (speaking from an American or European POV). It's hardly a coop if 99% of the workers involved are working for non-coop subcontractors in a different country.