Value depreciation is a phenomenon that affects all products, causing them to lose value over time even if they aren’t used, but especially if they are used. With smartphones, value depreciation is accelerated by the launch of new phones from the same OEM (hardware obsolescence), competing phones from other OEMs, release of new software, as well as physical wear and tear from use. As soon as you purchase a device and unbox it, it begins losing value, as you will not get the same pricing on the phone if you tried to sell it or trade it in. Even looking out of the context of resale after use, phones sold directly from the OEM also depreciate in value simply because technology keeps on moving forward, making the unsold product more obsolete every minute.
It is an open secret by now that Android devices tend to depreciate very quickly after their release. Most phones are released at a price that tries to cash in on the built-up hype for the device. Over the coming months, the phone drops down in pricing as the demand starts waning out, so you can purchase the same device for less than what you could at launch. As it turns out, not all phones depreciate in value at the same rate, and the people over at Bankmycell have collected data that indicates that Samsung’s Galaxy lineup depreciates in value faster than most other brands.
Bankmycell tracked the trade-in prices hourly over the last year in order to analyze which phones lost the most and least value. For instance, the Samsung Galaxy S9 which was released in March 2018 for $720 unlocked, ended up being worth only $290 in trade-in value by December 2018, depreciating in value by close to 60%. The S9 lost about 42% of its value a month after its availability, as Samsung tried to react against the responding competition. In only nine months, the S9 was ranked third for losing the most value out of all phones, followed by the S9+ in the fourth place. Consumers can only expect about $275 trading in their Galaxy S9 right now, according to bankmycell, although we see the S9 going around the $400 price range on Swappa. Thus, bankmycell comes to the conclusion that the S10 will follow a similar trajectory, with an expected value depreciation of about half its value after the first month of its release.
Au contraire, the iPhone X, which was released in September 2017 for $999, was worth $690 nine months later, showing half the depreciation (30%) as that of the S9 for the same duration. While the release of an iPhone caused trade-in price disturbances for all smartphones, the release of Android smartphones did not have any drastic impact on the trade-in values for the iPhone, marking them as more stable investments over a long period.
However, note that this data strictly relates to available trade-in prices, and does not include what a consumer might get if they sold the device through a third-party site like Swappa. Nonetheless, it reaffirms what the Android smartphone community already knew — iPhones retain more value than Android devices.
Source: Bankmycell Story Via: DroidLife
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