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Old iPhones hit second-hand marts
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 06 July 2010, 15:26 IST
San Francisco: In the two weeks after Apple and AT&T began taking preorders for the iPhone 4, a flood of old iPhones has hit EBay, recyclers and discount sites. Gazelle.com, a site that buys electronics from consumers, purchased 20,000 used iPhones.
Although many old models of iPhones are recycled, tossed out or socked away in a drawer, some of them can still command hundreds of dollars. As of July 2, Gazelle offered $168 for a perfect-condition 32-gigabyte iPhone 3GS, last year's model. According to Kristina Kennedy, a spokeswoman for Boston-based Gazelle, as much as $304 could have been paid by the company for the same product before the iPhone 4 came out.
In the three days after iPhone 4s went on sale, shoppers snapped up 1.7 million of it. Models costing $199 and $299 debuted in the US, UK, Japan, France and Germany on June 24. Many stores, including Best Buy, ran out of inventory. The 3GS model sold 1 million in its first weekend in 2009. EBay's site lists thousands of used iPhone 3GSs for sale, with prices starting as low as 1 cent.
Including the older 3G, the number of iPhone 3 models increased 124 percent in the US between June 5 and June 28. EBay, with the average selling price hitting $942, has turned out to be a hub for people looking to make a profit on the iPhone 4, said Katherine Chui, a spokeswoman for the San Jose, California-based company.
