As Samsung and Google promise unprecedented 7-year software support for their flagship devices, the challenge isn’t just about coding updates—it’s about orchestrating an increasingly complex product lifecycle management strategy. Companies like Dassault Systèmes have long provided such comprehensive PLM solutions for industries, but smartphone manufacturers now face similar complexities in managing devices that must evolve while maintaining compatibility with aging hardware.
In the technology space, it’s certainly ideal for consumers to keep their hardware for as long as possible. However, this means that companies need to provide software support for that hardware for longer. Without this, aging hardware gets left behind while new hardware ends up providing newer features and better security. Companies face challenges in supporting hardware for increasingly longer periods of time. This is likely why it took so long for brands like Google and Samsung to support smartphone updates for 7 years . This poses another challenge, though, as these longer software support periods for updates make it more complex for companies to manage product lifecycles. Hence, a need for Product Lifecycle Management software solutions.
Phone lifecycles and the divide between hardware and software
For most brands, phone lifecycles are usually just a few years. Why don’t they just make them longer? Probably because it’s not a simple fix. It might seem as easy as the company deciding to keep hardware updated for longer, but there’s more complexity to the situation than that. The hardware and software divide encompasses more than a few factors.
The cost of keeping hardware updated, ensuring the hardware will be compatible with new software further into the future, making sure that devices have enough memory and storage to run new software – these are all major factors that smartphone companies likely have to consider in these instances. There are also the logistics hurdles in communicating with all the vendors that play a role in creating a device like a smartphone. Chipset vendors, display vendors, memory and storage vendors. All these components need to work in a very specific way, and smartphone manufacturers have to coordinate with all those companies that manufacture the components to ensure that extended software support works properly with those components.
Google’s strategy revolves partially around controlling as much of the manufacturing process as possible
This is similar to how Apple does things. While Apple doesn’t actually assemble its chipsets in-house, it did design them, and it carefully picked a company to manufacture the chipsets for its iPhones. Google now does the same thing with its Tensor chips, which are highly specialized for its Pixel phones. Although the Tensor chips aren’t the complete reason for Google’s ability to provide 7-year updates to Pixel devices, they certainly are a big part of why it’s possible.
Samsung’s process is not too different, though it now works closely with Qualcomm for the chipsets in most of its devices as opposed to using a highly customized in-house chip on all of them. Samsung also has its own divisions that make panels, memory, and storage. So it’s able to control a significant portion of the component manufacturing to help ensure hardware and software compatibility over extended periods of time.
The reality of hardware constraints and working toward a sustainable future
In addition to the many different factors that smartphone companies must consider for extended software update periods, there’s also the major factor of whether or not hardware has the capability to support this. The reality is that some hardware just won’t be able to.
There’s also the factor of sustainability. Ideally, hardware that has extended software support for longer periods could lead to less e-waste and thereby a more sustainable future with smartphones and similar types of hardware products. This is yet another area where PLM software helps companies. From start to finish, PLM software helps smartphone manufacturers get to market more quickly, while also opening the door for more market opportunities and reducing the amount of waste that comes out of hardware development.
As the market demands longer phone lifecycles, manufacturers will have more of a need for PLM software solutions to help navigate the complexities of everything from driver updates to technology advancements to recycling.
