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A new report reveals that there will be 1.3 billion iPhones in circulation by the end of the year and that half of them will be second-hand units.
Analyst firm CCS Insight (via Forbes) that the predicted figures are the fruit of the smartphone’s brand extended lifespan. Next year, it is believed that the average life of an iPhone will reach up to eight years.
CCS claims that the iPhone is the top brand in the second-hand smartphone market, adding that second-hand offers allow customers to buy Apple’s luxurious devices at more affordable prices. With this, many are being pushed to choose old units over brand-new ones.
It adds that the “very well organised supply now in the secondary market” further allows this second-hand trend to grow. Meanwhile, Principal analyst Leo Gebbie said the insufficiency of major upgrade details entices customers to resort to refurbished iPhone units.
“The iPhone 15 has just come out, and it is incrementally better than the iPhone 14, which was incrementally better than the iPhone 13,” Gebbie said. “Increasingly there is this view from customers that say, ‘hey, I could go and spend a thousand pounds on a brand new iPhone 15, or I can go and spend four or five hundred pounds on a good quality refurbished iPhone 13.”
Financial and feature upgrade reasons aside, the analyst believes that customers are also becoming more environment-conscious nowadays, which also contributes to more users embracing the second-hand market.
Despite the growing trend that seems to be a threat to Apple’s iPhone business, CCS stresses that it is not bad news at all for Apple as more iPhones mean more devices that will use Apple’s paid services. Yet, the firm says Apple won’t always take this matter lightly as second-hand iPhones could soon threaten its revenue in the future.
