IDC examines consumer markets by devices, applications, networks, and services to provide complete solutions for succeeding in these expanding markets.
I said it before and I'll happily say it again. Removing hardware features while increasing prices will always cause stagnation down the road. When software features, camera bumps, and folding screens are all you have to offer, people will just keep their phones longer and use a $3 app to fill in the missing "feature" on One UI 6, Pixel's exclusive feature drops, or even Apple's Dynamic Island.
Looks like people have reached a point where the increased prices of phones has made them more price sensitive to replacing it for a newer model. Bet they'll raise the price again.
I just replaced mine but only because my charger port was dying. If that had not happened i had planned to replace it at about this time next year. If it had made it the device would have been 3.5 years old. As is it only got 2.5 years which annoyed me a lot. It was still perfectly fine on software, but the hardware failed me. This phone doesn't, but i would like my next phone to have wireless charging to avoid a repeat. I may have just gotten unlucky though as i have never ever had a charge port die until that one.