IT House reported on August 27 that SellCell, the leading second-hand service provider in the United States, published a blog post on August 25. Based on past data, within about 10 days from the release of Apple’s new iPhone to its sale, the second-hand recycling price loss of its users’ old iPhones could reach up to 20.2%.
Note from IT House: Founded in 2008, SellCell is the leading technology product trade-in price comparison platform in the United States. It focuses on the recycling of second-hand mobile phones and electronic equipment. It has long released research data on second-hand value retention rates of smartphones, covering a full range of models from mainstream brands such as Apple, Samsung, and Google. It is an important market reference source in the field of second-hand electronic equipment.
SellCell surveyed 2,000 U.S. iPhone users and combined the historical recycling prices of iPhone 15, iPhone 16 and iPhone 17 release cycles to analyze the possible losses caused by users delaying the disposal of old phones.
The survey shows that 40.9% of users will wait for the new machine to complete data transfer before disposing of the old machine, and 20.5% will wait for the replacement machine to arrive before disposing of it. The total of the two items is 61.4%, that is, more than 3/5 users will wait until the new phone is received and set up before selling or trading in the old iPhone.
Among users who chose to delay the sale or trade-in of their old iPhone, 54.1% said they needed to continue using their old iPhone until the new iPhone arrived; 23.3% needed to rely on the old iPhone to transfer data. The two items together account for 77.4%.
SellCell analyzed recycling quotes for the iPhone 15, iPhone 16 and iPhone 17 release cycles, comparing the highest available recycling prices for each model and storage capacity on Apple’s announcement day and launch date. The two time points are usually 10 or 11 days apart.
Among the 156 iPhone models tracked, 117 models saw their recycling prices drop between the announcement date and the launch date, accounting for 75%. That is, 3 out of 4 models had a lower value on the launch date than on the announcement date.
The price changes ahead of the launch of the iPhone 17 series are even more pronounced. 50 of the 54 devices depreciated within 10 days, accounting for 92.6%, with an average loss of US$36.46 (approximately RMB 245.7 at the current exchange rate).
In historical data, the iPhone 16 Plus 512GB suffered the highest cash loss. Its recycling price dropped from US$695 (approximately RMB 4,683 at current exchange rate) on the announcement day (approximately RMB 4,683 at current exchange rate) to US$566 (approximately RMB 3,814 at current exchange rate) on the launch day, a decrease of US$129 (approximately RMB 869.2 at current exchange rate), a decrease of 18.6%.
Proportionally, the biggest drop was the iPhone 15 Plus 128GB. The recycling price of this model dropped from US$440 (approximately RMB 2,965 at current exchange rate) to US$351 (approximately RMB 2,365 at current exchange rate), a decrease of US$89 (approximately RMB 599.7 at current exchange rate), and the value dropped by 20.2%.
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