Source - http://www.marketwatch.com/
By - Quentin Fottrell
Category - Holiday In West Miami
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami
By - Quentin Fottrell
Category - Holiday In West Miami
Posted By - Inn and Suites In West Miami
 |
| Holiday In West Miami |
Apple
AAPL
+0.13%
is training retail staff to handle trade-ins,
according to the blog 9to5Mac. “I like the environmental aspect of it,
and so that part of it really is encouraging to me,” CEO Tim Cook
said on the company’s most recent earnings call. But Apple has
financial reasons for accepting trade-ins as well now. A growing number
of iPhone owners use resale sites as a way to subsidize their upgrades —
often completely covering the cost of a new phone (with contract) by
selling their old one. Now the wireless carriers themselves have
introduced their own trade-in services. (A spokesman for Apple declined
to comment, as did Brightstar, the mobile-phone distributor said to be
working with Apple.) See also: 10 things Apple won’t tell you
Customers should benefit from Apple’s entry into the market, as rivals
will likely sweeten their deals, experts say. Apple’s trade-in program
will give consumers more options for selling used iPhones, says Louis
Ramirez, senior editor at DealNews.com. “It won’t directly affect sites
like eBay and Craigslist, but it will force other trade-in sites like
Gazelle and Amazon Trade-In to remain competitive,” he says. Although
Apple is unlikely to offer customers more than resale sites for used
iPhones, “it will be a welcome option for people who don’t have the
patience to send gadgets back and forth in the mail,” Ramirez says.
Independent trade-in sites also offer one distinct advantage over
retailers and direct sale sites like Craigslist and eBay: They give
consumers a grace period between the time they agree to sell their phone
and hand it over. For the first time, Gazelle will give consumers 50
days to send in their device if they lock in their price by Sept. 10,
with its usual 30-day grace period after that. It offers $350 for a mint
condition iPhone 5, and $235 for a 4S. AT&T offers $261 for the
iPhone 5 and $175 for the 4S. “Apple will likely fall in line at a
competitive rate,” says Scott McLaren, chief marketing officer at
ProtectCell, a cellphone insurance company that also buys used phones.
Others are less sure that consumers will see any immediate benefit,
however. “A greater supply generally means lower prices that consumers
can get for their devices,” says Colin White, managing director of
SellCell.com, a resale site for smartphones. But if demand also
increases among consumers for used devices, he says that could help
trade-in prices for used phones over the long term. Indeed, most
industry pros say the resale industry is still in its infancy. “Our
market analysis shows that less than 15% of smartphone-owning consumers
in the U.S. actually trade-in their phones,” he says.
And with just over 250 Apple stores in the U.S., rivals say Apple’s
entry will actually give them much-needed free publicity. Case in point:
GameStop, a company that also offers trade-ins for iPhones, has over
4,400 physical stores across the U.S. “This is not a market-share
fight,” says Israel Ganot, CEO of Gazelle.com, which buys iPhones and
sells them overseas. “It will lift the boat for everyone,” he says,
making iPhone trade-ins a mainstream activity for consumers who wouldn’t
have considered it before.
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