Trade-ins of Samsung phones tripled last week ahead of new iPhone launch

The new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus goes on sale today, and in the past week smartphone reseller Gazelle said that it saw trade-ins of Samsung phones increase three-fold. A sign perhaps that many Samsung users are intending to jump ship.

Gazelle's CEO Chris Sullivan said, "We’re seeing a higher propensity to switch. The combination of the screen size and the functionality indicates that this is going to be a strong and compelling product for Android users to switch.”

Addtionally, a poll conducted by them also found that a third of Android users said that they are likely to upgrade to Apple's latest phones. And out of these people, 39% said that it was mostly because of the new phones' larger screens.

Apple has resisted against making larger phones for quite some time, but now that it has, all signs point towards the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus as being their most successful phone yet. In fact, the new phones already broke Apple's record for pre-orders, with 4 million pre-orders in the first 24 hours of availability. Foxconn, the main manufacturer for these new phones, also recently said that it is struggling to meet demand despite putting out over 500,000 phones day. Analyst now think that Apple is likely to ship over 61 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, an increase of about 10 million or 19% as compared to last year.

Samsung, who recently warned investors of declining profit, is facing tough competition in the smartphone business. Apple continues to compete aggressively in the high-end, while new players to the market like Xiaomi is gaining huge traction in the lower-end of the market.

Source: Bloomberg