Here at HYLA Mobile, an Assurant company, we offer a white-labeled customer service function for our trade-in services. In other words, if a customer contacts one of our customers (carrier, retailer, OEM) with a question about the phone they just traded in, that question gets seamlessly shunted in our direction.

Our support is offered via phone, chat, and email, and many if not most of our support requests are received online. In fact, the number of support queries we receive via the internet is very large and continues to grow, which could lead to a problem with scale.

When consumers embark on the quest to trade-in their mobile phone, they face a multitude of options regarding where and how to conduct their trade.  All trade-in programs strive to create a very simple experience for this consumer, and they all have many points in common – the customer hands over their old device, the cosmetic & functional condition is verified, and the customer receives payment in return, either in the form of store credit, gift card, or bill credits.  

Specific dates in the calendar are imperative for the sale of new devices. Christmas has been a staple for years now and Black Friday has become another opportunity to encourage consumers to upgrade to the latest and greatest smartphone.

Apple’s recent iPhone 12 event was significant for the smartphone and secondary device market—and not just because Apple launched its first set of 5G devices—but because of the focus Apple placed on trade-ins. In fact, it was the only ancillary offering that was mentioned at any point during the event. 

Each quarter, we analyze the millions of data points we’ve acquired and filtered regarding the mobile device trade-in market. We examine the most-traded devices, total amount of money returned to U.S. consumers, average value of traded devices and more. This quarter we have added trade-in value of wearables to the mix of data we share.

Assessing pre-owned smartphones manually is not easy nor efficient. First, there’s a problem of scale—massive amounts of trade-ins are conducted every year. Here at HYLA, we processed 3 million pre-owned phones in 2019, which amounts to over 10,000 phones per day. Hiring the number of workers needed to assess these phones purely by hand would be cost-prohibitive, especially since some of these phones aren’t able to return much value other than the cost of their recycled raw materials.

HYLA’s mobile device protection business, Lori®, continues to grow with consumers and partners alike. For those unfamiliar with Lori, it expands on the mobile device protection offerings available in the US, which are generally only available for purchase at point of sale or within 30 days of device activation and provide a one-size-fits-all approach. However, Lori allows consumers to purchase plans for pre-owned devices at any time through a simple and engaging digital experience. 

I recently had the opportunity to speak on the topic of data monetization at the 2020 MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium (MIT CDOIQ). This summit, now in its 14^th year, has long been a place for leaders in data science and analytics to share their insights regarding new technologies and trends at every scale and across every industry.

Each quarter, we analyze millions of data points about the mobile device trade-in market. Our research uncovers insights into the most-traded devices, the devices with the highest trade-in values, the total amount of money returned to consumers in the United States, the average value of traded devices, and more.

The effort to manufacture and sell smartphones is a truly global effort. From design to sale, one can expect a smartphone to have already traveled halfway around the world, which in recent months, has been an impossibility for people, let alone smartphones.