As an American guy living in Europe for 6 years, and a phone buff, what I have learned over time here is that is that personal computing technology tends to be overpriced. Desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, all of it tends to be overpriced. Often times, when you are trying to buy new devices, you see prices that tend to have a slight increase over what we see as list prices in the United States. I think we can all remember when the iPhone X was released back in 2017 for 999 USD in the US, but then 999 GBP in the UK and 999 EUR in the EU. It left lots of people scratching their heads like: "what gives?"
In the end, this over pricing that we see for new technology being sold here also affects the second-hand used market. Europeans, in turn, tend to sell the used items on online marketplaces like Ebay, OLX, etc. with prices that are often higher than what Americans tend to see on Ebay, Swappa, or Craigslist. Every marketplace in Europe is like this. They all feature people selling their old phones and devices for as much money as possible can. Of course, every once in a while you can find a sweet deal when buying tech, but the general vibe is that prices are high and if you want to find tech for good prices, you really have to spend quite a bit of time shopping around, or just waiting for prices on the device you seek to purchase to eventually fall when they go on sale or clearance.
Aside from the nature of sticker pricing, what I have also noticed, is the price of tech tends to depreciate extremely slowly. When I said that you have to wait for prices to go down, you really have to wait quite awhile. For example, in Europe iPhones tend to remain very expensive used, despite the fact that there are reports out there documenting overall cellphone price depreciation that show that iPhones should lose their value by -45% in 2 years, as shown here: https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/cell-phone-depreciation-report-2019-2020/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Let me point out that it is not just iPhones, or premium devices that have some sort of disproportional value retention, its also something that curiously affects mid-range and budget devices here in Europe as well. For example, let's consider a device like the Honor 8X, which is currently being sold today for roughly 217 Euros brand new and 187 Euros used in the EU. See the shopping link here: https://www.amazon.de/gp/offer-listing/B07KG1NMB1/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all. Now let's go over the reality that back in 2018 this device was launched for 240 Euros new. That was back then. There is absolutely no reason that a 2 year old mid-range device should only lose only 9.6% or 22.1% in that span of time. In this case, it is very interesting to see that even budget phones hold their price on the used market like this. It's almost comical that it seems like budget phones hold their even better than flagship phones here in Europe.
Just imagine: would you ever buy an used Honor 8X for 220 Euro? My American readers would likely agree that this is absurd pricing.
Further reading
1. GadgetNow (IN) https://www.gadgetsnow.com/mobile-phones/Honor-8X
2. NextGenPhone (UK) https://www.nextgenphone.co.uk/honor-8x-review/Announcement
• Honor 8X Release Date and Price: It's not too old as official Honor 8X release date UK was somewhere back in September 2018 and it's since then available on UK stores to get your hands on. It comes in four sensational colours - Black, Blue, Red, and Pink. As for Honor 8X Price UK, it goes for £229.99
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