14 DAY TRIAL // The refurbished phone market is growing at a really fast pace, according to a new report, and one of the companies to benefit from it is Apple.
iPhones are typically very expensive phones that not everyone affords to buy, but refurbished devices bring nearly the same quality with a major price cut. And this is one of the reasons the market of used phones has posted a growth of no less than 13 percent in 2017, according to CounterPoint Research, getting very close to 140 million units.
And while the used smartphone market grew 13%, the new smartphone biz managed to increase figures by only 3%, which is an indication that the bigger prices of new models, like the iPhone X, pushed more buyers to refurbished devices.
The firm says that only 25% of the pre-owned phones are sold back into the market, and this shows just how much potential this side of the industry could have if more devices are refurbished.
At this point, used phones account for approximately 10 percent of the entire mobile market, and unsurprisingly, most customers are going for an iPhone.
Apple, the leader in the refurbished phone market
There’s a reason for this. Apple typically offers up to four or five years of support for its models as compared to just two or three years in the case of Android devices.
Apple and Samsung represent close to three-fourths of the refurbished smartphone market, and the research firm says “Apple leads by a significant margin.”
This, in turn, hurts the low-end Android phone market. Instead of purchasing cheap devices typically manufactured by Chinese companies, buyers choose a refurbished iPhone instead, as they can benefit from longer support and better build quality and features.
“The mid low-end market for new smartphones is being cannibalized by refurbished high-end phones, mostly Apple iPhones and, to a lesser extent, Samsung Galaxy smartphones,” CounterPoint Research Director Tom Kang says.
iPhones typically have a higher resale value, so even if they are refurbished, they don’t come cheap. For example, a refurbished iPhone 7 32GB can be purchased from Apple for $499 in mint condition, while the brand-new model is being sold in the Apple Store for $549.