Most of those who buy a mobile phone end up selling their device after 1/2 years of use to buy a new one when they get enough money or when a new terminal is launched on the market by a manufacturer. In this way, a so-called secondary market for used phones was created and most of the phones that reach this market as gifts or resale are iPhones. information they come from a study done by the company Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) in the USA, a country where iPhones are extremely popular.
The research firm believes that, for every used iPhone that carriers activate, they save around $400. In the fourth quarter of 2011 alone, CIRP figures that secondary-market activations saved AT&T and Verizon between $400 million and $800 million in subsidy costs.
Even if the percentages in the USA do not apply in Europe, the idea itself applies everywhere in the world. When an iPhone is resold, a user comes into contact with the Apple eco-system for the first time, and as soon as he enters this system, there are quite high chances of staying in it. Mobile phone operators do not pay subsidies in this secondary market but they could gain a subscriber and although Apple does not gain money in the case of a resale of a used terminal, the company gains a user who can become a direct potential customer. Those who did the study say that an owner of an old iPhone will have the desire to own the company's newest terminal and will raise money to buy it and then they could buy other Apple devices.
I support the theory presented above because I have gone through these phases and I think I am not the only one. In conclusion, Apple, like any other company, wins even when an iPhone is resold.
