iPhone rumors have reached a fever pitch with the word on the street being that Apple is holding its fall iPhone event on September 12th, and mainstream media is even paying attention to the rumor mill during primetime. Everyone wants to know about Apple’s next smartphone, including millions of iPhone 4 owners with expiring contracts.
What do you do when you want to buy a new smartphone? You sell your old one. That’s why eBay has seen a huge 70% spike in used phone trade-ins during the last few days.
CNET reports:
According to the online sales site, submissions to its trade-in program increased 70 percent in the past three days, when compared with the same period the week before.
The company says that during that span “nearly” 100,000 smartphones were offered up for trade-in by people using the company’s Instant Sale program. Among the Apple phones that people offered to trade-in, eBay says the 16GB model of the iPhone 4S tops the list, followed by the 8GB iPhone 4 and 32GB iPhone 4S.
Sites like eBay and Gazelle always see massive amounts of used iPhone trade-ins during the weeks leading up to an Apple announcement. 89% of eBay’s smartphone trade-ins during the week of the iPhone 4S’s October 2011 launch were old iPhones. In the weeks leading up to the third-gen iPad event, Gazelle saw a 400% increase in used iPad trade-ins.
Old iPhones lose value when a new iPhone is announced, so you’ll get more if you sell sooner rather than later.
Source: CNET
