Around 85% of refurbished phone buyers want to spend on them again, report

India’s organised refurbished market is seeing a lot of traction driven by returning customers looking for affordable smartphones. Around 85% of users who bought refurbished smartphones in the last two years said that they will go for it again, shows Cashify’s annual user survey for 2022, published on Tuesday.

The report further shows that for 70% of users affordability was the primary motivation for buying refurbished phones, while 12% bought them to use a secondary device and 13% to gift them to someone.

Cashify interviewed 8,000 people for the survey to gauge consumer sentiments toward pre-owned phones.

Cashify survey indicates there are still many who are sitting on unused devices. It found that over 52% of consumers have two or more old/unused devices in their household. Around 36% said that they are using old devices for work and emergencies, while 25% said that they didn't receive a good price for them.

Though awareness about accumulating e-waste and the importance of recycling old electronics has grown, many still don’t understand how recycling is done. The survey shows that 71% of users were aware of the concept of e-waste, but only 48% understood the process of recycling their old devices.

Further, Cashify also released its annual Whitepaper for 2021, which claims that the majority of older devices sold in the last year were by users in the age group of 25 to 44 years, out of which, 84% were male and the rest were female.

Xiaomi (25%) and Apple (16%) are the most popular brands in the used smartphone market. According to Cashify, buying a pre-owned iPhone is a lot more affordable than buying a new one. The iPhone was the most favoured brand in big cities such as Delhi, Bengaluru, and Mumbai.

Cashify also revealed something called a Truth Index for cities, which shows the percentage of smartphone users who provided the most accurate information on the actual condition of their devices while putting them up for sale online.

The report concluded that users in Bengaluru (29%) were most honest about their device’s condition, followed by Hyderabad (28%), and Kolkata and Pune (21% each).