The BankMyCell website has published an extensive report indicating which brands and smartphone models hold value the longest and which depreciate the fastest. It analyses the prices of over 300 different models in terms of their value over a specific period of time from the market launch. What was established?
The smartphone market is growing very fast and the prices of new devices are rising just as quickly. In the end of 20210, the price of the flagship device - the iPhone 4 - was $ 599, while in 2020 the iPhone 12 Pro Max was valued at $ 1,399. And they are not the most expensive smartphones anyway, because there are also those that cost almost 2,000 dollars (Galaxy Fold). So it's no wonder that we are often looking for second-hand flagship devices or models from previous years. These transactions are monitored by the BankMyCell service, which in the period from January 1 to December 31, 2020 registered the value of 310 popular phones every hour. What conclusions have been drawn?
The most important conclusion is that Android flagships depreciate in value twice as fast as iOS smartphones within 1-2 years of the market launch. During the year, the value of the new iPhone drops by 16.70%, while the flagship with Android - by 33.62%. Within two years, the value of the iPhone loses 35.47% of the price, and the smartphone with Android - as much as 61.50% of the price. After four years, iPhones lose an average of 66.43% of their initial value and Android phones to 81.11%. However, this does not apply to the budget iPhone SE 2020 - here the decline in value was similar to that of Android models and this smartphone lost an average of 38.32% of its resale value eight months after its launch.
The website also shows huge drops in the value of Android smartphones, priced below $ 350 on the day of release (i.e. budget and lower price range). Here, the buyback value drops in one year averaged 52.61% of resale value, 73.61% in the second year, 85.15% in the third year and 94.90 in the fourth year. A popular example is Samsung A50, which lost 79.94% of its trade-in value from March 2019 to December 2020. Or the Motorola G7 series, which lost up to 79.17% of its trade-in value in 9 months of 2019, and then a further 61.97% in January-December 2020.
We already know that iPhones hold the best value, and which brands lose value the fastest? Among the most popular manufacturers, three brands were distinguished, the devices of which received the highest percentage in terms of value loss. HTC came first - in this case, sales prices fell by 53.08% in 2020. Motorola was in the second place - smartphones of this brand lost an average of 42.57% in trade-in value. On the other hand, Sony came third on this infamous list - prices of this brand's models dropped on average by 39.51%. The list shows that Apple, LG and Nokia devices retain their value the longest.
Source: BankMyCell
