BlackBerry trade-ins reach all time high

By Mike Dunn October 25, 2011

We can’t say this news is completely unexpected with all the recent events surrounding BlackBerry. Gadget recycling website Gazelle told CNET that people are trading in used BlackBerrys at an all-time high. An exact number of BlackBerrys being traded in was not disclosed, but a couple ideas as to the cause of the influx were provided.

It’s no secret that BlackBerry recently had a global outage of its data network, and directly following the outage Gazelle saw an influx of Blackberry trade-ins. We reported that as many as one in five BlackBerry users wanted to ditch the platform. While there was a spike in used BlackBerrys being sold after there was another event that really sealed the deal.

The announcement of the iPhone 4S is what has been really increasing BlackBerry trade-ins. Gazelle’s Chief Gadget Officer Anthony Scarsella said that the iPhone 4S caused, “easily the highest volume of BlackBerry trades ever seen period.” It might not just be that people want the newest phone out of Cupertino, but it might also be a sign of a shift in the user base of large companies that use BlackBerry products.

To be fair Scarsella also pointed out that there has been a spike in the trade-ins of Android devices. In the same period of time they were tracking BlackBerry trade-ins Android saw an increase of 72 percent of purchases by Gazelle. It is not as clear that the iPhone 4S announcement played as large a role in the increase as it did with BlackBerry. With so many new Android devices being released every month Android users might just be trading in to upgrade to another Android phone.

As much as we would like to see BlackBerry thrive once more it is looking less and less likely. Hopefully the introduction of BBX will help turn the tide, and bring BlackBerry back into the mix with Android and the iPhone.

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