Wired
Just like cars, smartphones will depreciate over time. A website called BankMyCell tracks the value retention rate of mobile phones. Throughout last year, the company tracked the repurchase prices of 310 popular smartphones every hour. According to a new report it released, based on phones with an initial buyback price of $700 or higher, Android phones lose value twice as fast as iOS models in the first two years of ownership.
When you take the phone home and take it apart, the phone starts to depreciate. Within one year, the iPhone’s average depreciation rate was 16.70%, and within two years the depreciation rate was 35.47%. In contrast, the average depreciation rate of Android phones in one year was 33.62%, and the average decline in two years was 61.50%. This gap will narrow over time. Four years later, the average iPhone depreciation rate was 66.43%, while the average Android phone was 81.11% over the same period.
From the perspective of a single model, the depreciation rate will be different according to the degree of praise of a certain mobile phone in the market. For example, only 9 months after the release of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, the repurchase price was 64.71% of the original price. In the same 9-month period, Apple’s iPhone 11 Pro Max repurchase price was 67.78% of the original price.
Low-priced Android phones priced below US$350 will depreciate by 52.61% after the first year, 73.61% within two years, 85.15% after three years, and 94.90% after the fourth year. An example mentioned in the report, the mid-range Samsung Galaxy A50 from March 2019 to December 2020, its valuation dropped by nearly 80%.
From the brand point of view, the smaller the depreciation of Apple mobile phones, it means that they are more valuable than most mobile phones. On average, the average value loss of iPhone models last year was 22.35%. HTC’s situation is the worst, most likely due to the brand’s lack of a resale market. On average, the value of HTC smartphones in 2020 has fallen by 53.08%.
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