You got to hand it to Apple
Apple is such a massive brand with a massive loyal fan base that even rumors about its products, which may turn out to be completely false, can push consumer demand and consumer behavior. Take for example, the case of the iPhone 5. There hasn’t been an official announcement about the date of the official launch for the next iPhone model, but it only took one rumor at one blog to start a wildfire among the chain of technology blogs covering Apple products. Once the chain reaction was going, people were hyped up and acted wildly to the rumor. As a result, eBay’s trade-in program for iPhones surged 70% in just the past few days. This is quite a dramatic increase compared to the same period the week before.
The company said that close to 100,000 smart phones were being offered for trade-in by eBay users using the site’s “Instant Sale” feature. The most popular unit being offered for trade-in is the iPhone 4S 16GB model. Close behind it is the iPhone 4’s 8GB unit and the 32GB version of the iPhone 4S. This is quite a nice surge, however compared to when an actual Apple device launch is announced, this quite pales in comparison. For example, during the 4th day after the iPhone 4S was announced, there were 375,000 trade-in offers for smartphones at eBay. Still you can’t say the surge is not impressive. It’s almost 1/3rd of the number of trade-ins in the actual launch. Talk about a powerful brand. Even mere rumors can get people started.
Rumor about Apple iPhone 5 causes consumer surge at eBay
We will let you in for some information we got, however we need to let you know explicitly that this is still a rumor. We will never know until Apple actually makes some announcement. The rumored event is that Apple will be announcing the next generation of iPhone on September 12. Supposedly, the unit will go on sale nine days later on Friday, Sept 21. Even though this is still a rumor, a wide range of news outlets – from AllThingsD, The Loop, The Verge, Reuters, Bloomberg and even the New York Times— have jumped on the confirmation bandwagon. We don’t know if these multiple reports would pan out but considering that many big time online media brands are confirming the date, it indicates that it might be true.
In addition to eBay, there are other sites that offer trade-in programs for the smartphones. These are BuyMyTronics, NextWorth, and Gazelle.
If you prefer offline action, RadioShack has its own trade-in program. All this hoopla and consumer frenzy will prove to be interesting once the iphone5 is announced.