Gloomy economic conditions in the UK has resulted in a surge in demand for refurbished handsets. As the conditions have worsened over the past three months, both consumers and businesses alike are turning more and more to the cheaper option of buying and selling second hand phones. Many phone companies have reported that customers are spending less on handsets, with some even resorting to buying ‘retro’ handsets such as the Nokia 3310 and the 6310i, in favour of signing another lengthy contract which includes a free modern handset.
Many network retail staff members have reported that both consumer and business customers are opting for SIM-only deals and keeping their existing handsets, or even getting the devices from other locations, such as eBay, or mobile recycling companies and dealers. This has resulted in a huge increase of refurbished mobile sales.
Eazyphone, a Macclesfield based handset refurbishing company has said the number of old handsets it receives has doubled from 1,500 to 3,00 a day over the course of four months. The manager of Eazyhone, Nick Brown, stated:
“Just yesterday I received more than 400 BlackBerry handsets from a company who were looking to recoup some money. Certainly in the past few months we have seen a rise in the number of people sending in devices and 25% of those are immediately refurbished and sold back into the UK.”
Mark Pollak, director of Turn On Your Mobile which specialises in handset repairs, refurbishing and recycling has also seen a rise in demand of old style phones:
“We recently ran an ad campaign on retro phones and it has been very successful. My best selling handsets at the moment are the Nokia 3310 and 3510 – we are selling hundreds per week.”
Some of the more popular retro handsets in demand also include the Nokia 6230 and the 6310, which remain popular because car manufacturers such as Mercedes are still selling the original car connectors for the handsets.
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