Something that I was just thinking about recently, spurred on by cleaning out some of my cable drawers and running across my old beloved Palm Treo 650 and a Handspring with the GSM adaptor. I couldn’t sell these on eBay when I first replaced them and I’m sure that the current resale market approaches nil - it’s hardly worth the bother to put them up for sale when I can expect that the sale price will be roughly equivalent to the marked up shipping cost – or worse.

Whereas I resold my first generation iPhone to a colleague for the subsidized price of my current 3G model. In talking to her recently, I discovered that she’s upgraded to a 3GS and given the original model to her father who uses it every day. Everyone I know that has upgraded an iPhone can tell me to whom they sold/gave it to.

Every other “smartphone” that I’ve used has transformed itself into a useless brick taking up space that I can’t bring myself to throw out since I don’t want electronics in the landfill and I haven’t yet found the right recycling program to take them off my hands.

Which brings me to the question of what is the recycle/resale/reuse rate on previously loved iPhones vs. other models?

Install base vs. sales this quarter

It seems to me that of all the gadget hounds I know, very few of them have been able to unload their older models, even relatively recent ones. As far as I know, most of them are filling up various junk drawers across the world.

This would point out to me that the sales volume of iPhones is a relatively good measure of installed base, minus breakage. Not minus loss and theft since I’m fairly sure that those ones are being used as well…

Which brings me to the recently announced sales figures showing RIM still ahead with 43% or so of the smartphone market. Is that figure a decent predictor of their install base? I’m beginning to think not.

My (anecdotal) experience with Blackberries of the current generations is that they are fairly problematic quality-wise. I have a friend that goes through a Blackberry a year with them just up and dying. The attrition rate in our office is frighteningly high after a year’s use and out of thirty we’ve replaced 10 or so in warranty, and now are buying replacement units.

Also there’s the business world’s standard churn rate of renegotiating with different carriers to get a new, better subsidized deal with new handsets. That’s how we got the Blackberries in the first place - 30 in one fell swoop.

Or just the regular business routine of buying cool new gadgets for executives that insist that the must have the latest and greatest.

I don’t know anyone who has purchased a Blackberry for their own personal use – but I do know a whole lot of people that have been supplied a Blackberry by their company and have gone an bought an iPhone. I’m sure they exist, but I just don’t seem to have any in my immediate entourage.

Where have all the Blackberries gone?

Given RIM’s longer existence in the market and their consistently higher sales volume, you would think that there is a huge install base. But (anecdotally) traveling in trains, planes and metros this should translate into every second person using a Blackberry and I’m just not seeing it (here in Paris, anyway).

I guess I must not hang out in the right places.