Indian millennials prefer used phones over new, survey finds

Key Highlights

• Nearly 4 million pre-owned mobile phones sold online in India.
• Two million pre-owned phones on OLX garnered GMV of $270 million
• Samsung most popular brand exchanged on OLX

Buying and selling of pre-owned mobile phones has emerged as a popular trend among Indian millennials, OLX Consumer Research on Used-Goods and Selling Trends (CRUST) survey said on Thursday.

“India, which is the second largest market for smartphones globally is also witnessing an influx of and a burgeoning demand for pre-owned mobile phones,” the report said.

The OLX CRUST survey was conducted by IMRB said that 75% of the pre-owned mobile phone buyers and 55% of the pre-owned sellers were young millennials in the age group 19-29 years.

“The desire to ‘upgrade’ is the primary reason for selling mobile phones for 68% of the households in India. This is followed by 27% respondents, who cited ‘boredom’ as the main reason for selling mobile phones,” the report said.

Higher value by selling phones online was also another reason to indulge in this market.

The most popular brand being exchanged on the online classified ads company’s website was Samsung followed by Apple and Xiaomi.

“In the quarter of January- March 2017, Samsung had the highest share at 27% of the listings, thereby emerging as the most popular brand,” the report said.

Apple had a share of 20.4%, Xiaomi with 12.8%, Lenovo (including Motorola) with 9.8%, and Micromax with 2.8%. Other brands contributed 27.2% of the total mobile phone listings, the report said.

In Samsung the most popular model being exchanged was Samsung J7 and the J7 Prime. While the iPhone 6, Redmi Note 4, Vivo v5 and Oppo f1s were others.

“Of the online marketplace of 4 million units, 2 million devices are marked as ‘sold’ on OLX. Every day, on an average 5,500 phones are marked as ‘sold’ by the users on OLX. This implies that every minute more than 3 phones get sold on OLX,” the report said.

It further added that the Gross Merchandise Value of the sold phones on the company’s website accounted for $270 million.

Average price of the phones exchanged on OLX ranged between Rs 9000 -Rs 10,000 with an average age of the phones ranging between two to three years.

“OLX receives 11.2 million buyer enquires on used mobiles every month, with each mobile listing receiving double-digit unique buyer responses,” the report added.

“Mobile phones are the most popular gateway to internet in India, especially for the new-to-net population. Mobile phone is our biggest category in terms of listings, and is growing at 45% year-on-year,” Amarjit Singh Batra, CEO, OLX India said.

Some reports estimated 20 million pre-owned phones in India out of which 80% was still exchanged offline.

The top cities that bought and sold high volumes of smartphones in FY 2016-17 were Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata. While, Pune, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Jaipur were the fastest growing, emerging markets in this category, the report added.