How much would you pay for a refurbished Samsung flagship?

An interesting report has popped up from Reuters that claims South Korean Electronics giant Samsung has a plan in motion to sell refurbished versions of their high-end flagship smartphones.

Would you buy one?

According to the report, this information comes from “a person with direct knowledge of the matter” and is part of Samsung’s move to sustain the recent upswing of their mobile profits. The company posted their best mobile profits in two years thanks to the success of the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge.

These are clearly desirable smartphones and it isn’t hard to see why. As the development of smartphones approach their peak, the popularity of secondhand devices is likely to increase due to the fairly minor differences between the new models and their predecessors.

With how well Samsung has built their new smartphones, the likelihood of it lasting a long time without significant damage or degradation is also greatly increased.

Reuters’ source says that the refurbished smartphones will come from users who have signed up for the one-year upgrade plan in countries like South Korea and the US. The phones that have been traded back to Samsung will then be refurbished and sold again at a lower price.

There is currently no information on how much lower Samsung will sell these devices or in which countries they will choose to run this program, but for comparison, Apple sells their refurbished iPhones for about 69% of the original value. If Samsung decides to price their refurbished devices at a similar price point, you could potentially pick up a refurbished Galaxy Note7 here in Malaysia one year from now for just over RM2,000.

While that seems pretty good for the consumer (cheaper flagships) and Samsung (they can sell the same phone twice) but there is a little more to it than that.

First off, if you look from a consumer’s standpoint, the crucial factor in determining how well these will be the price. How much would you buy a year-old refurbished Note7 for? RM2,000? RM2,200? Considering how quickly prices fall (you can get an S7 edge now for below RM2,500, just half a year after it was launched), consumers can already get brand new devices at incredibly low prices. That means, for it to be successful, Samsung will have to sell their phones at really low prices, which brings us to the next issue.

Assuming Samsung does sell it at a low price, it could eat into their established mid-range devices like the Galaxy A9 Pro which is just under RM2,000. This isn’t a problem for someone like Apple because they don’t sell cheap midrange phones so they don’t have to worry about cutting into their own market share.

Either way, this is still merely speculation. There is no official announcement from Samsung yet about this program so we would advise you to take it with a pinch of salt.

In the meantime, let us know your thoughts on this matter in the comments below.

[SOURCE, VIA]