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Fear Causes Android Smartphone Resale Prices To Drop
Apple's crushing court win over Samsung less than week ago was obviously going to shake up the mobile market significantly, especially in the long term. However, it appears that it's having a significant effect within just the five days since the verdict was announced: the resale price of used Android phones has dropped by around 10%, which is an awful lot in such a short space of time. This has been noticed by major resale site gazelle.com, since a lot of Android phones have been dumped for sale there, driving down prices. Gazelle.com's chief gadget officer Anthony Scarsella noted, "Consumers seem to be jumping ship. We expect this trend to continue, especially with this latest verdict."
The verdict has created a lot of uncertainty in the market regarding Android upgrades, since future phones may operate in significantly different ways in order to comply with the ruling. This means that users could lose their favourite features, such as the method of zooming into a picture or the way apps are laid out, thereby putting them off upgrading for as long as possible. It also doesn't help that the economics of owning an iPhone mean that owners may actually make a profit when trading up to a new model!
Now, while Apple is looking to ban eight current smartphone models whose sales are highly profitable for Samsung, it's not all bad news for the Android platform. It has some key features which the iPhone lacks potentially making the phones more attractive, such as bigger screens, longer talk time and support for the ubiquitous Adobe Flash, mostly used for playing videos.
So, could Steve Jobs' vision of killing the 'copycat' Android platform actually come true? Let's hope not.
To be sure, even before the ruling Android products didn't hold their resale value as well as iPhones. The Samsung S II — which sells for $199 new on a two-year contract, the same as a 16GB iPhone 4S — currently goes for $90 on resale site NextWorth.com. The iPhone, however, sells for as much as $300 on NextWorth; at that price, consumers often make a profit on the subsidized price when they trade up. "This will continue to hurt Android resale values," said Louis Ramirez, senior features writer on DealNews.com.
Posted by | Wed, Aug 29, 2012 - 12:34 PM
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