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.

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. 

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.

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.