Last week Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) noted that iPhone owners hold onto their phones considerably longer than Android phone owners. In a new report, CIRP says that, despite retiring older phones, the iPhone owners still seem to have better options for the disposition of those old phones.
CIRP asked new phone buyer survey subjects what they did with their previous phone. Phone buyers have a range of options for their old phone, including giving it to a friend or family member, trading it in, or selling it to an independent marketplace. Some keep an old phone as a backup. And others find themselves with broken phones that they dispose of or recycle, or sadly, without a phone at all, after their phone is lost or stolen. CIRP classified these alternatives into three categories:
- Retained: given to a friend or family member, or kept as a backup
- Sold or traded-in: to Apple, a carrier, or to a third-party marketplace
- Disposed: lost, stolen, broken, recycled, or donated
CIRP says a significant percentage of iPhone owners turn their old phone into money. 41% sold or traded-in their old smartphone, and fewer than 20% disposed of it. In comparison, only 17% of Android owners sold or traded-in their old phone and about 30% disposed of them.
Over half of Android owners retain their old phone for a friend or family member or to keep as a backup, compared to about 40% of iPhone owners. It appears that monetizing an old Android phone is not a winning proposition, so few of them are sold or traded in, according to the report.
“iPhone owners tend to have more invested in their phones and their phones tend to have more residual value,” says CIRP. “We learned last week that retired iPhones are generally older than retired Android phones, so their value retention equation seems to be even stronger than one might have thought.”
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