What happens to the value of Samsung's 'outlaw' phones?

• Posted by Sindhuri G August 31, 2012 - Filed in Technology - 1,673 views

  Earlier this week I heard from Gazelle.com that the buy-back site saw a 50 percent jump in trade-ins of Samsung phones, particularly the Galaxy S II, in the three days immediately following a jury's finding that the GSII and a number of other Samsung phones had infringed on Apple patents.

  Now, on its own, that's not really enough evidence to conclude that Samsung device owners are discarding their phones in utter disgust at the lack of respect for our ridiculously murky and inefficient patent system. After all, a lot of those trade-ins could be people simply unloading an old phone in favor of another blockbuster Samsung phone like the Galaxy S III, which is not part of the patent suit. Or there's always the specter of a new iPhone around the corner that could encourage a trade-in for some extra cash.

  After hearing from Gazelle earlier this week, I immediately contacted another buy-back site -- eBay Instant Sale -- to see if it had seen the same pattern. They hadn't yet but promised to pull more data for me to check closer.

  That data came back to me earlier today, and it offers even stronger evidence of a run on old Android smartphones following the jury's smack-down on Samsung last week.

  "In the three days following the verdict, Android smartphone trade-in offers generated by people using eBay Instant Sale grew by 60 percent when compared to the three day period prior to the verdict," an eBay spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to CNET.