Apple’s record-setting debut of the iPhone 4 has led to another surge: a flood of old iPhones hitting eBay, recyclers and discount sites.
, a site that buys electronics from consumers, purchased 20,000 used iPhones in the two weeks after Apple and AT&T began taking orders for the iPhone 4. That compares with 350 in a typical two weeks.
“It’s off the charts,” said Kristina Kennedy, a spokeswoman for Boston-based Gazelle, referring to the influx of old phones. “It’s three times what we projected.”
The yearly introduction of a new iPhone, combined with the desire of Apple fans to own the company’s latest devices, has put millions of old phones back in circulation. While many of these devices are recycled, tossed out or socked away in a drawer, some can still command hundreds of dollars. Environmental groups, though, say the constant upgrades encourage waste.
As of Friday, Gazelle offered $168 for a perfect-condition 32-gigabyte iPhone 3GS, last year’s model. The company would have paid as much as $304 for the same product before the iPhone 4 came out, Kennedy said.
The phones can fetch more from secondhand sites than they cost new from AT&T, the iPhone’s U.S. carrier — in part because AT&T offers a subsidized price, dependent on signing a contract.
Shoppers snapped up 1.7 million iPhone 4s in the three days after they went on sale, leading Apple chief executive Steve Jobs to call it the company’s most successful product launch.
“It went crazy,” said Brett Mosley, CEO and founder of Denver-based Buy MyTronics.
In May, the site was buying 10 iPhones daily, he said.
“The last two weeks, we have averaged almost 40 iPhones a day,” he said, adding that prices have dropped.
The phones fetch about $182 on the site, 35 percent less than at the start of June.
