CHIU CHI-WAI has an expensive habit. His first of many 'hits' took place in 1993; then they came at eight-month intervals. Soon they were as regular as every three months. Now they may happen once a week. His drug of choice? Mobile phones.
'I am addicted,' he acknowledges, laughing about his tendency to trade in his most recent purchase simply to buy the latest on the market. But he is less blithe in admitting his mobile-phone mania means he has had to go home to his wife and parents broke on pay day, or is in debt to his family.
The 28-year-old decorator says he can't help but ditch his old phone when a new model comes out, even though he realises the changes are sometimes incremental: a blue screen (instead of a colourless one), say, or a 2mm difference in size. He is sometimes also pulled in by ads. If he likes the movie star featured in a mobile-phone campaign, for instance, he must have the product.
Chiu is not alone. He is part of a growing group of people in Hong Kong whose phones change with the seasons. According to Smartone executive director Patrick Chan Kai-lung, the average time mobile-phone users keep their handsets has fallen from 18 months last year to nine to 12 months now.
That is twice as fast as in the mid-1990s, when the replacement rate was roughly once every two years, says Jeanette Tan Ai-lin, events and public-relations manager for Motorola Asia Pacific. Mobile-phone salespeople have not only noticed the trend, but are hoping it continues. 'Whenever a new model comes out, people flock in to trade in their old ones,' says Michael Wong of the Causeway Bay branch of Broadway. The salesman says that up to 60 per cent of customers trade in their phones every six months, while some do so as frequently as every two weeks.
Among those who upgrade at least twice a year are the friends of university student Vincent Luk Wing-hei. The 21-year-old says about eight of them change mobiles every three to six months, including a 17-year-old Form Five student who buys the handsets with his pocket money. It is an affordable habit, Luk says, explaining that they don't go for the high-end models, paying about $600 per new phone every six months. 'That's just $100 a month,' he reasons.
