Ask HN: What do you do with your old iPhone when you buy a new one?

Re:Ask HN: What do you do with your old iPhone when you buy ... by patio11 on Thursday October 30, 2014 @03:02AM (#8531753)

Softbank (Japan) will buy it back from you. Yesterday they gave me $240 (structured as $10 a month for 24 months as a statement credit) for my iPhone 4S. (http://www.softbank.jp/mobile/campaigns/list/tada-kisyuhen/) Generally they're rather less generous ( http://www.softbank.jp/mobile/campaigns/list/shitadori/ )

I assume that Softbank processes 10,000 of these at a time and then sends them to China for resale.

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Re:Ask HN: What do you do with your old iPhone when you buy ... by justinnoel on Thursday October 30, 2014 @03:18AM (#8531779)

$240 is a good price for a used 4S! Now I'm thinking how can they afford to do that so?

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Re:Ask HN: What do you do with your old iPhone when you buy ... by patio11 on Thursday October 30, 2014 @03:30AM (#8531805)

I assume that a portion of the calculation is "We got him to switch from a $60 plan to a $90 plan to support the iPhone 6, so rebating him $10 a month is not a hard decision."

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Re:Ask HN: What do you do with your old iPhone when you buy ... by mseebach on Thursday October 30, 2014 @03:37AM (#8531819)

Depending on which discount rate you use in your NPV calculation, it's a good deal less than $240. Also, if softbank are like mobile providers in Europe, it's a $10 credit on the most expensive plan with everything and the kitchen sink included - not the smaller tier or pay as you go plan that's actually plenty for most people.

Also, $10/month (well, less, depending on what the iPhone is actually worth) doesn't seem to be totally out of whack for a short term promotion to grab some market share.

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