Online Learning Leads To Surge In Sale Of Second-Hand Smartphones

There has been a boom of sorts in the second-hand smartphone market in India propelled by online learning. Having realised that online learning is here to stay at least till the schools reopen, parents are scouting around for second-hand devices for their children.

“One of the interesting trends we have seen during the pandemic is that a lot of people have started to buy devices for their kids,” Mandeep Manocha, co-founder and CEO, Cashify, was quoted as saying by indianexpress.com.

“We saw a completely new pocket of demand coming up where parents are buying devices for their kids,” he added.

Manocha told indianexpress.com that the demand for pre-owned phones is coming from across the country, though consumers from tier-3 and tier-4 cities are more inclined towards buying a used smartphone. Previously, tier-3 and tier-4 cities used to contribute 20 percent of demand on Manocha’s platform but now it has jumped to 35 percent.

The demand for pre-owned devices, especially smartphones has also gone up on Olx during the pandemic. There was a 109 percent growth in the mobile category on the platform in July, reported indianexpress.com.

“Work from home is definitely driving the growth,” Head Horizontal business unit at Olx India Tarun Sinha told indianexpress.com. So if you look at the demand side of the ecosystem, there is a 40 percent growth and even on the supply side there has been a 71 percent growth in the month of June over May,” he added.

Sinha said Apple, Samsung, RealMe, Oppo, Vivo, Oneplus an Xiaomi are in demand on Olx.

Anticipating that the surge might be temporary, Varun Misra, an analyst with research firm Counterpoint told indianepxress.com, “Once things normalise and educational institutes re-open, the dependence on mobile for education will reduce.” Studying on a phone has its limitations like smaller screens because of attention spans and bad networks, he said.