I don't think maintaining security beyond 3-4 years involves more money. It just involves having a clean abstraction between lower layers and higher layers, muc

I don't think maintaining security beyond 3-4 years involves more money. It just involves having a clean abstraction between lower layers and higher layers, much as we have in any desktop OS. At this point, cell phone hardware is generations ahead of the 80386, where this model worked just fine. This might involve fewer synergies occasionally and more standardization, as we have in x86 computers. This might slow progress a little bit or lead to a slight decrease in performance. Or it might not. If my device is 10% slower, I'm fine with it; I don't think I'd notice. The primary "cost" is in number of units sold. If phones don't obsolete, you'll sell less phones. This means Apple/Samsung/Sony/... make lower revenues selling phones. R&D costs are roughly fixed, while economies-of-scale are reduced, so per-unit costs are a little bit higher. I do pay a little bit more for my phone, which I'm glad to do, since I'm doing it less often. On the whole though, society is more efficient, and so an average, everyone is better off.