“An influx of aging iPhones in the secondary market could be a key indicator of Apple’s holiday season success, according to Nik Raman, co-founder and CEO of resale website uSell.com,” Michael Newberg reports for CNBC.
“On CNBC’s ‘Fast Money,’ Raman said the offer price for the iPhone 4s fell by some 50 percent leading up to the 2014 holidays. That drop, he said, indicated a flood of devices into the market, as people looked to unload their older phones after upgrading to newer models like the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus,” Newberg reports. “‘What we found was that the depreciation for the 4s this year is far more steep and dramatic than the 4 was last year,’ he said.”
Newberg reports, “Raman’s findings mesh well with a report published by analytics firm Flurry at the end of December. By tracking total device activations from Dec. 19-25, Flurry concluded that Apple products accounted for more than 51 percent of all new device activations the week up to and including Christmas day.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Edward W.” and “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
Unless those iPhone 4s units were being dumped in favour of Android devices, a harbinger of doom for Apple
Yeah……., Uhmmm, No. Me thinks you forgot the sarcasm tag.
In order to substantiate my conjecture about mobile platform switchers, I consulted two Internet search engines: Google and Bing, to see what’s trending. It’s a crude metric, yet highly suggestive:
In Google:
“from Android to iPhone” – 167,000
“from iPhone to Android” – 242,000
suggesting that interest in switching to Android was 45% higher!
In Bing:
“from Android to iPhone” – 196,000
“from iPhone to Android” – 186,000
suggesting that interest in switching to iOS was a mere 5% higher.
Bing has 18% of search queries; Google has 67%, and therefore its results should be weighted more heavily than Bing’s. On balance, therefore, one could argue that considerably more users were considering dumping their iPhones for Android models.
(Google has proclaimed its search engine impartial and free from bias numerous times \s)
Even if that were accurate, which I doubt, Apple still probably made money, the others didn’t..