Old iPhones lead among used trades by iPhone buyers
updated 04:10 pm EST, Tue January 17, 2012
BlackBerry, Android devices trail behind
Amongst iPhone buyers selling or giving away old phones, 49 percent of the used devices are actually earlier iPhones, suggests Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. In a recent survey of iPhone 4S buyers, CIRP found that 53 percent of them were handing off an older phone for money or as a gift. Older iPhones dominated trades in that group, with BlackBerry and Android smartphones trailing behind at 21 and 15 percent, respectively. "Other" phones represented only 15 percent.
Of the people selling or gifting old iPhones, 87 said they expected recipients to activate them. CIRP suggests that this may account for 11 percent of activations since last October, and actually have saved carriers money, since they normally take an upfront hit subsidizing each new iPhone. US carriers are thought to each be saving around $400 per used iPhone on a network; in all, this may have spared AT&T and Verizon between $400 million and $800 million in subsidies to Apple.
Even though Apple technically doesn't make any money off of used iPhones, CIRP argues that they may nevertheless be beneficial to the company in the long-term, since they indoctrinate people into the Apple product sphere. From there they may be tempted to buy the newest iPhone models, or at least content from iTunes or the App Store.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jul 2006
Apple & unlocking
Of course it's good for Apple to have these given and sold phones around, particularly when they're students with careers ahead of them. It prepares them to buy a new iPhone later.
But Apple and the cell phone companies need to help this process along by unlocking the phones. There's simply no reason to keep a lock on a phone whose contract has been paid out. Doing that voluntarily may also head off legislation that requires unlocking AND a host of other things.