According to The Wall Street Journal, the iPhone 4 and 4S are helping to create a second-hand market that is both robust and global. This market tends to be mostly US to overseas in direction and seems to be growing in response to the high visibility of the iPhone brand via the iPhone 5. Basically, an entire industry has grown up around the resale of older iPhone devices. According to Chief Executive of buyback service Gazelle Inc., Israel Ganot, “we are supply constrained. There is insatiable demand for this product.”
What many iPhone owners don’t even realize is that their older iPhone may sell for more than the price originally paid for it, due to the way that U.S. carriers, at least, subsidize the cost of the iPhone by requiring annual contracts, which locks users into a higher overall cost than they may understand. The Wall Street Journal noted that a 16GB iPhone 4S can sell for roughly $240 on gazelle, which is over $40 more than most U.S. users paid for the device. Even the iPhone 4 can sell for $145 according to the report. There are obviously other choices, such as Craigslist, which in many cases ends up netting even more of a profit to those selling used iOS devices. The WSJ continued to note that broken iPhones are also being used for parts and repairs overseas. AT&T phones supposedly sell for a bit more in the second-hand market since they can be used with more networks overseas (since they are based on a GSM network).
The iPhone launch also caused an influx in new selling and buying of older model iPhones, with Gazelle stating that it gave out over 500,000 quotes on the day the iPhone 5 was announced and over 2.5 million in the last month alone. According to the company, almost all of these went to US-based customers. Another surprising fact is that this activity is five times as much as it was a year ago when the iPhone 5 was announced.
How many of you have participated in the buying and selling of used iOS devices? If so, where did you end up buying or selling yours?
Source: The Wall Street Journal
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