AT&T is reacting to the fact that people keep their phones longer in a weird way that, however, makes perfect business sense. Study after study show that folks buy a brand new phone every three instead of two years now on average, plateauing the industry growth in the last two years or so. 

The factors behind this statistic are many, but two really stand out. First, even midrange phones now do a good enough job to be kept for years on end, and second, the removal of subsidies and jacking up phones' retail prices made people squeeze every last mileage out of their current ...