According to a survey, consumers generally have good experiences with used smartphones or tablets. However, many people still have reservations about buying second-hand.
Many people obviously don’t even consider buying an electronic device second-hand. As a representative survey by consumer advice centers showed, less than a fifth (19 percent) of consumers in Germany have ever bought a used smartphone, laptop or other digital device.
According to the survey, smartphones are most often bought used. 65 percent of used buyers said they had purchased such a device on the second-hand market. Laptops (32 percent) and tablets (27 percent) follow in second and third place.
Uncertainty about the device status
Of the 19 percent of buyers, a clear majority of 91 percent had good or even very good experiences with the used technology. For the survey, a total of 1,000 people aged 18 and over were interviewed by telephone in May and June.
But the majority of consumers remain skeptical. For 63 percent of those surveyed, buying used is probably out of the question. Above all, uncertainty regarding the condition of the devices and their remaining lifespan played a role. “More people need to be convinced to even consider used items as a purchase option,” said Julia Rehberg from the Hamburg Consumer Center.
Raw materials, emissions, energy
The constant development of technical devices drives consumption. Their production costs raw materials, requires energy and causes emissions, says Rehberg. Over 20 million smartphones are sold every year in Germany alone.
The old smartphone often just ends up in the drawer at home. According to the digital association Bitkom, around 210 million old cell phones were stored in households in Germany last year. It is estimated that more than four fifths of German citizens have at least one discarded cell phone. This number has more than doubled since 2015.