The holiday season is not only a great time to buy, but it could also be a smart time to sell your old devices. A new CNET report reveals that nearly 7-in-10 smartphone owners have never sold their old phones.
However, when it comes to smartphone owner resale value confidence, Apple owners have confidence. Forty-two percent of iPhone owners surveyed by CNET have confidence in their device’s resale value. Nineteen percent don’t, and 39% have never considered the resale value.
The CNET report raises questions on whether consumers are leaving money on the table, especially given the importance of trade-in deals during the phone buying process in the US as well as the growing secondhand smartphone market. The reasons consumers provided for not selling old phones varied, but the results indicate that most respondents either don’t want to make the effort, had no leads on where to resell or are worried about privacy. Key findings from the CNET report:
- Over 3-in-4 US (77%) smartphone owners claimed that resale value was either not influential in their purchase decision or was given zero consideration.
- Nearly 1-in-5 (18%) are not confident in the resale value of their smartphones.
- Survey results suggest that privacy concerns over resale as well as a lack of clarity about the resale process are top of mind for consumers, perhaps indicating that either more education and more protection around digital privacy is needed.
- 38% of those who have not resold phones cite concerns about their private data when it comes to selling their smartphone. More specifically, over 3 in 10 (31%) are concerned about their private data remaining, and over one-fourth (26%) are worried about the process of removing all of their data from their device.
- Gen Z (47%) and millennials (43%) reported higher confidence levels on the resale value of their smartphones than their older boomer (23%) and Gen X (34%) counterparts.
