Two brands made up 80% of global second-hand phone sales in Q2

The Apple iPhone dominated global shipments of second-hand smartphones with the device responsible for a dominating 62% of deliveries during the second quarter of this year. Samsung phones were a distant second with 18% of such shipments over the three months from April through June. Organized second-hand smartphone sales rose 7% in the quarter according to data from CCI Insights.

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Second-hand smartphones originally produced by Apple and Samsung had specific areas where they outperformed with the iPhone particularly strong in North America and Samsung carrying Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa. But even though the shipping volume of second-hand phones rose in Q2, pricing was lower leading to a 13% decline in the value of second-hand phones shipped to $7.7 billion. 

The decline in second-hand smartphone pricing was caused by the popularity of older devices such as the iPhone 11 series. While prices for the 2019 phones have declined sharply in recent years, the three models (iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max) made up a large share of the shipments of previously used handsets.

You might not give it much thought, but demand for the current iPhone 16 range plays a huge role in determining how well the second-hand smartphone market is acting. For example, the soon-to-be-released iPhone 16 line could generate strong sales in the primary market. This would be expected to result in a large flow of newer traded-in iPhone units to the secondary pre-owned marketplace.

While some analysts have been calling for an iPhone supercycle this year thanks to Apple Intelligence, Apple's AI initiative, many of the best AI features won't be available to supporting models (iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max) until iOS 18.2 is released in December. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman believes that we won't see an iPhone supercycle  until next year. Still, strong demand for the iPhone 16 series could add fresh supply to the second-hand market.

Another factor playing a big role in Europe is the Radio Equipment Directive which goes into effect on December 28th and requires all imported devices to come with a USB-C port. The goal is to reduce e-waste by reducing the use of proprietary chargers. CCS Insight believes that this will reduce supply in Europe's secondary marketplace by 8 million units by 2025.

For this year, CCI Insight expects the global organized secondary smartphone market to outperform last year's results. It also says that the second-hand smartphone market will do better than new devices as consumers understand the advantages of buying second-hand technology to save money and help the environment.