Apple customers sitting on $9 billion in old iPhones

“Why is an old iPhone still worth hundreds of dollars? New research suggests a surprising explanation: hoarding,” Quentin Fottrell reports for MarketWatch.

“More than half of American consumers say they have two or more unused cell phones in their household, according to a new survey released Friday. The trade-in value of all those old gadgets: $34 billion, according to resale site SellCell.com – which has a vested interest in tapping into this possible gold mine,” Fottrell reports. “Old iPhones account for roughly a quarter of that sum. Apple has been able to release a new model every year since 2007 – 85 million phones and $50 billion in revenue – partly because it’s easy and inexpensive for customer to sell their old ones for new models. But clearly large numbers of users never part with their old devices.”

Fottrell reports, “Almost one-in-five of those surveyed say they are just “too lazy” to sell their old devices, the survey found. “

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: You don’t want to know how many older model iPhones have lying around here. We really ought to get on that…

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ellis D.” for the heads up.]