Mobile phones in India being an amenity accessible only by the wealthy and the middle-class of the heavily populated, fast developing country is now, fortunately, a story of the past, a history that is simply no longer valid in the world we live in today! Having crested the 1 billion user milestone, and continually growing at a rapid pace, the ongoing and extensive growth of the usage of mobile phones in India can be contributed majorly to one key factor – the sale of refurbished and second hand or used mobile phones.
Refurbished phones in India, or for that matter even second hand mobiles or unboxed cell phones are now the poor man’s access to the world of socializing, conducting business and staying connected on the move in India. In short, being able to be feel that they are a part of the world they have aspired to belong to since a long, long time! Being sold online as well as offline by people who want to upgrade to cellphones that offer both newer and better technology and design, selling mobile phones second hand benefits both, the users of the second hand mobiles being sold as well as the buyers of these phones.
Selling refurbished mobiles allow sellers to gain back the value of the phones being sold post their usage and depreciation while allowing people from lower economic brackets the opportunity of gaining access to mobile phones, even if they are refurbished mobiles that they would not be able to afford otherwise. With an estimated 179.6 million people still living below the poverty line in India, this offers a mammoth number of people an access to technology capable of bettering their livelihood.
A complementary feature that comes with most normal, used or refurbished mobile phones in the market today is a basic Internet connection. This gives people using mobile phones second access to important news, government notifications, better communication, and both self-awareness as well as awareness of the community around them. Not only does the sale of refurbished cell phone devices make a large sector of the Indian population more technologically accessible, but it also accounts for collective social upliftment and advancement.
With Indian companies such as OLX, Snapdeal, Flipkart, Togofogo, Quikr as well as multinational online commerce giants such as Amazon India offering the best deals on mobile phones, the growth of cell phones in India has been inevitable. In terms of being the best deals on mobile phones, these offers on mobile phones online also benefit sellers – the transactions giving them reasonable returns on their used but still functional cell phones.
With cell phones being referred to as the modern-day ‘Swiss army knives’, large corporations and marketers have harnessed this widespread penetration of mobile phones within the Indian population to their benefit as well. The ‘missed call’ phenomenon, where a caller calls and disconnects before the other person receives the call, leaving a notification to the person they called with their number is being used by a large number of telecom companies, call canters, and customer relations branches of large corporations to conduct business. These missed calls attract a large number of customers to these companies because they do not cost the caller.
The ubiquitous reach of cell phones in India has made it the most important channel for last mile outreach, becoming the window to information, education, employment, livelihood as well as shopping and commerce. An even more aspect of this up rise of billions of Indians using cell phones is that not many of them are too far from becoming Smartphone users soon. With Indian companies such as Micromax and Karbonn manufacturing smartphones and making reasonable offers on mobile phones, information is about to become more accessible to the Indian population than ever. It is thus, no surprise that India is perhaps about to overtake the United States and soon become the second largest market for smartphones in the world, and the very sale and availability of refurbished and used mobile phones are a huge part to this move forward!
All this improvement, and yet it is safe to say that the excitement has just begun with way more to look forward to!
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