Two Million Pre-Owned Mobile Phones with a combined GMV of $270 Million were sold on OLX last year

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. According to the 2016 OLX CRUST (Consumer Research on Used-Goods and Selling Trends) Survey, conducted by leading market research firm IMRB, households in the country are increasingly buying and selling pre-owned mobiles.

According to CRUST 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. It is interesting to note that, 75% of the pre-owned mobile phone buyers, and 55% of the pre-owned mobile phone sellers on OLX are young millennials in the age group of 19-29 years.
Another reason for the uptake in the category is the higher value received by selling online, which according to CRUST is 25% higher than the one realized through offline selling, and 47% higher than that through exchange.

According to some industry reports, there are 20 million pre-owned mobile phones in India. In terms of the quantum of listings, in FY 2016-17 OLX registered more than 9.9 million listings of mobile devices in India. As per industry estimates, approximately 80% of the pre-owned mobile phone trade is still offline. Being an unorganised sector, it is largely driven by offline sales through dealers, retailers, and shop-owners. Of the online marketplace of 4 million units, 2 million devices are ‘Marked as Sold’ on OLX. However, not all users mark their product as sold, hence the actual online share could be much higher, and in the online classifieds space it would be approximately 80%.

The average price of each mobile phone on OLX is INR 9,000, as compared to INR 10,000 average selling price of new smartphones sold in India in Q1, 2017.
Top Cities That Transacted in Mobile Phones:

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.

Top 5 Mobile Brands on OLX:

In the quarter of January- March 2017, Samsung had the highest share at 27% of the listings, thereby emerging as the most popular brand. This was followed by Apple with 20.4% share, Xiaomi with 12.8%, Lenovo (including Motorola) with 9.8%, and Micromax with 2.8%. Other brands contribute 27.2% of the total mobile phone listings on OLX.

Top 5 Popular Models on OLX:

The most popular smartphone models searched on OLX in April 2017 were, iPhone 6, Samsung J7 Prime, Redmi Note 4, Vivo v5 and Oppo f1s. On any given day one can find, 19,900 iPhone 6, 10,300 Samsung J7 Prime, 9,900 Redmi Note 4, 31,00 Vivo V5 and 3,800 Oppo f1S listed on the platform.