Study by OLX reveals millennials mostly buy & sell pre-owned mobile device

Desire to upgrade is the primary reason for selling mobile phones for 68% households in India

Nearly 75 per cent of pre-owned mobile phone buyers and 55 per cent of pre-owned mobile phone sellers on leading consumer-to-consumer marketplace OLX are millennials in the age group of 19-29 years, a new study said on Wednesday.

According to the study by OLX, the desire to upgrade is the primary reason for selling mobile phones for 68 per cent of the households in India.

This is followed by 27 per cent respondents who cited 'boredom' as the main reason for selling mobile phones, the study pointed out.

"With high penetration and frequent updates, consumers often upgrade to new models within months. This results in good-quality and fairly new pre-owned phones entering the market within months of their launch," Amarjit Singh Batra, CEO of OLX India, said in a statement.

"Along with the consumers we are also seeing interest from leading mobile brands, leveraging our platform to reach out to users looking to upgrade. Mobile phone is our biggest category in terms of listings and is growing at 45 per cent year-on-year," Batra added.

Almost 10 million mobile phones and mobile accessories were listed on OLX in financial year 2016-17.

The study noted that people get 25 per cent higher value when they sell devices online as compared to offline selling and 47 per cent higher than that through exchange.

The last financial year also saw Chinese brands witnessing a spike in listings on OLX, with the listing share of market leaders as well as Indian manufactures declining.

"During financial year 2016-17, the listing share of Chinese brand Xiaomi climbed from 4.2 per cent to 12.8 per cent on OLX," the report said.

Also, the average price of each mobile phone on OLX is Rs 9,000, as compared to Rs 10,000 that was the average selling price of new smartphones sold in India in the first quarter of 2017.