Companies that want old mobiles?

[northwest monkey]

There seem to be loads of companies popping up recently wanting to buy old mobiles - why is this & how are they making money?

They typically claim to be recycling them or sending them around the world to "less developed nations" but that doesn't make sense to me as manufacturers subsidise handsets anyway & I would imagine for a lot of people in "less developed nations", food & shelter is more important than a mobile anyway.

No reason other than curiousity for my question

[AndrewW-G]

My guess would be that the phones are refurbed and sold on as such to either the mentioned third world where phones dont get a subsidy or to the telecomms companies for re-distribution i.e. if you break a phone and they replace with a refurbed unit

[jamoor]

Export.

[t84]

Royal Mail do one called Simply Drop that I'm sending my N95 8gig to for 140 quid, not bad I thought!

[northwest monkey]

t84 said:

Royal Mail do one called Simply Drop that I'm sending my N95 8gig to for 140 quid, not bad I thought!

This is my point - you get £140 which is probably a good price & they get a mobile for what reason?

Export to where?

[samwilliams]

northwest monkey said:

I would imagine for a lot of people in "less developed nations", food & shelter is more important than a mobile anyway.

Slightly (well, quite a lot, really) off topic, but I was having a chat with an Ethiopian farmer the other week, and he was explaining why, in his opinion, the mobile phone has been the most important development for farmers out there. Previously they would have loaded up their donkey and trundled off to the market, which could well be at least 10 miles away. When you get there, if you find out that the price on offer is crap, you're going to sell it anyway rather than waste a day's effort of getting there and back, and the dealers knew this as well.

Now, thanks to the mobile phone, they can find out what price to expect before leaving home, and decide whether it's worth it or not. As a result, the price they're receiving has significantly increased. From my experience, a man is more likely to have a mobile than water and electricity in Africa.

Anyway, carry on as though I was never here.

Edited by samwilliams on Monday 10th August 00:29

[deevlash]

I just checked how much Id get for my old phones, I tend to keep a phone for a while so I havent had that many. Anyway heres the list;
siemens c35i:no money offered
Panasonic gd87:no money offered
sonyericsson v800:£2.12
sonyericsson p990i:£20.09
blackberry storm (my current toy):£85.07

What a crock of st, Id hate to think how much a blackberry storm goes for just the handset, I bet its considerably more than £85 quid!

[deviant]

I heard they go to places like India and China where poorly paid workers take them to pieces to get the valuable stuff out like gold and tin.

[IforB]

Certain electronics do go off and get ripped apart for the materials that they are made of. It's fairly environmentally disasterous as well since there are no safe guards whatsoever and there are some nasty chemicals in some things.

I'm not sure that that happens with phones though.

In developing countries, then mobiles are far more important than here in the UK. We have an established land line system, which developing countries usually don't have outside of the major cities. It's far easier to set up the infrastructure for a mobile network than it is to set up a landline system, so it's hugely important.

In certain countries, the telephone companies are so useless that even though land lines exist, it is so difficult to get them do anything, everyone has mobiles instead. I lived in Poland for a while and was told that it would take approximately 3 years to get the phone switched on in the flat I had, so I didn't bother.

Even in the UK, if it wasn't for the internet, I'd have probably got rid of my house phone by now. It only gets used when my parents ring up.

Edited by IforB on Monday 10th August 01:12

[davido140]

deviant said:

I heard they go to places like India and China where poorly paid workers take them to pieces to get the valuable stuff out like gold and tin.

Certainly not a working phone, someone somewhere in the world will use it (see the african farmer post earlier) there is no shortage of other printed circuit board waste from all manner of ste (from you old beta max though to that PC you chucked out last year because it couldnt run the latest version of Doom) that will be pulled apart by some poor sucker in the 3rd or in fact "1st" world (see India and China, hardly developing nations with economies of that size) for the few quid worth of copper, tin, iron, gold, paladium, platinum and the rest. Shame the poor sods will be dead before 40 from heavy metal poisoning.

Sorry for rant, sore subject, respect your WEEE disposal regulations, they are they for a reason!

[scorp]

davido140 said:

deviant said:

I heard they go to places like India and China where poorly paid workers take them to pieces to get the valuable stuff out like gold and tin.

Certainly not a working phone, someone somewhere in the world will use it

There are restrictions against importing mobile phones into China.

[Pappa Lurve]

Depends on the phone. They are either sold on or broekn into parts that are then either used to repair other phones or the components themselves are recycled.

[dudleybloke]

most non european countries dont subsidise the purchase cost of mobiles. as stated before if you where an african tribesman you wouldn't be too bothered about having the latest 3g video service so as long as it works it will do! i wonder whats the highest african score is playing snake!