As of this writing, the pandemic situation may be starting to look up a little. This has prompted many states to gradually relax their social distancing guidelines, allowing certain businesses – including carrier stores – to reopen.

On its face, this seems like good news for the telecom industry, especially since the vast majority of smartphone sales happen to take place during face-to-face retail transactions. The problem emerges when you consider that even though states and governors are bullish about restarting the economy, the public is understandably wary about returning to in-person commerce.

When we started planning this blog, we’d intended to offer some generalized advice about promoting online sales of mobile devices. While online is a vastly important channel for carriers, OEMs and retailers, it still only a small percentage of total new smartphone sales. The vast majority of phones were still sold in retail stores.

The unresponsive touchscreen, a flash of light and then the black screen: all things a mobile phone owner has experienced at the death of a device.

Those little signs of a phone losing life fill any technology addict with utter despair as they swing between “I hope it just run out of battery” to the realization they might have to replace it.

Each quarter, we take unique data from our analytics platform to analyze device trade-in trends across the North American market. Our data analyzes trade-in value of devices, the top traded smartphones, as well as the average age of smartphones at the point of trade-in.

Today is the 50^th anniversary of Earth Day, a global day of recognition designed to help people care for – and take care of – the environment. Across the world, 190 countries recognize Earth Day (there are only five that don’t) and over a billion people participate by planting trees, cleaning up litter, and donating to charitable causes.

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc globally, taking lives and livelihoods on its path, and seriously impacting global economy. During this time, as a company and SMB, we have stayed focused on: keeping our employees and their loved ones healthy and employed, continuing to provide unparalleled service to our customers and partners and helping our first responders and fellow countrymen with our resources. Via this blog, I want to share some of the best practices in which our management team and employees collaborated to implement.

We’re living through difficult times right now. From social distancing to self-isolation, quarantining, wearing masks, using gloves while grocery shopping, and what seems like new videos daily to watch on how to wash your hands, people are doing anything and everything to stay safe. The COVID-19 pandemic has germ awareness top of mind as we are all embracing the importance of taking every possible precaution to help reduce the spread of infection and remain healthy.

The impact that coronavirus has had on the world is truly shocking. It has robbed families of loved ones, disrupted global economies and generated tremendous levels of fear and anxiety. It has most certainly affected the global mobile device industry. Since the virus emanated in China, Chinese production lines for electronic devices have been significantly disrupted – factories and retail stores have closed while authorities work fast to stem its spread.

Customers are hanging onto their phones longer than ever, with the average consumer now waiting about 3 years before trading in their phones. What this means is that when a user finally does trade in their phone, it's hard drive potentially contains more information than ever – information that could be used to steal customer identities or commit other data crimes. Smartphone trade-ins might be a valuable source of revenue, but how can carrier, retailers and OEMs protect customer privacy?

5G is now a commercial reality in many countries around the world. We are also at a global tipping point – the number of 5G devices being purchased and activated is set to accelerate dramatically. Ericsson predicted that 13 million 5G devices would have been shipped by the end of 2019 – and will increase to a staggering 160 million units by the end of 2020.