The secondary market for mobile devices continues to grow, giving you a significant opportunity to strengthen your revenue streams. By 2023, IDC predicts that the market for used smartphones will be worth $67 billion.

The data is clear. Millions of people have lost their jobs, businesses have been closed, and it’s not clear whether jobs will return. Amidst all of this, carriers, retailers, and OEMs need to keep selling phones in order to keep their own workforce employed. How do companies drive the consumption of new devices during a recession?

We are now five months on since the first Coronavirus cases were reported, and while no one could have imagined the devastating impact the virus has had on the world, we are at a stage where some restrictions are being relaxed to try and bring back some form of normality—whether that is extending hours allowed outside or encouraging shops, beaches and parks to reopen.

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.