Consumers think the mobile trade-in process ends when they get their cash or credit towards a new device; but service providers know there’s more to it – especially at the back end.

Every quarter we compile data about the mobile device trade-in market. We look at the most-traded devices, the phones with the highest trade-in value, the money returned to consumers over the quarter, and more.

There’s a certain degree of consistency each quarter, but it’s good to have the baseline data to examine as industry trends come and go.

It seems like we’re just now starting to see the impact Apple’s iPhone 7 release has had on the secondary smartphone market. And yet, the latest-and-greatest iPhone is coming quickly.

Details about the iPhone 8 are still unclear, but it’s never too early to predict how the secondary market will react to the Q4 influx of used devices and trade-ins.

Smartphones have become a near-universal extension of ourselves. In the United States, mobile penetration rates are nearing 80%, and about half of Americans have cut the cord entirely, solely functioning on their mobile phones.

Some of us get obsessed by reality TV. I’ll be the first to admit I was like that with Storage Wars, partly because of the cast of characters, partly out of amazement for the stuff people leave behind.

Did they or their loved ones lose track of what was in storage, or was it personal setbacks that prevented them from paying the storage fees? 

The secondary market for mobile phones has been exploding in recent years due to the proliferation of new devices and the wider range of availability. 

While we’re so used to seeing carriers and device manufacturers compete in the primary market for smartphones, competition in the secondary market continues to heat up.

This past September I attended Mobile Future Forward for the 5th time. Every year, Chetan Sharma puts on a great show that brings together some of the greatest leaders in the mobile communications business. 

Since the beginning of Mobile Future Forward, 7 years ago, Chetan has been building up the fourth wave theory—the idea that mobile telecom revenue has moved from voice technology to messaging services to data connectivity, as each generation becomes commoditized.

It’s fall and that means Apple has yet again unveiled a new iPhone. In what’s become a familiar ritual, consumers are excitedly pulling their new iPhone 7 models out of the box and again solidifying the smartphone’s hold on the tech marketplace.

As with every other introduction of a iPhone, the rollout of the iPhone 7 means the older models – which themselves were once the hot, new products – find a new position in the Apple hierarchy. All models that precede a new one drop a notch on the iPhone family tree.

 Smartphones are just about everywhere. They have become the indispensable electronic device, and the numbers back it up: More than 1.4 billion smartphones were sold worldwide in 2015.

But there’s a flip side to this incredible purchasing trend: electronic waste. In the U.S. alone, more than 150 million smartphones are discarded annually. Consumers who are thrilled to dispose of the old to enjoy the new device and move on to a new one, may not realize how many devices end up in landfills, polluting anywhere between 1,200 to almost 5,000 gallons of ground water per device.

In tracking trends for selling used mobile phones we found that the Australian market and U.S. market are a lot like consumers in the rest of the world.  In its most recent mobile consumer survey of Australians, Deloitte found that 48% of those with smartphones held onto them after purchasing new ones.