Tech

Americans lose billions in older smartphones

More Americans are hoarding their old iPhones in the sock drawer, new research shows, despite each gadget being potentially worth several hundred dollars.

Almost 50% of people say they store old phones in a box, drawer or cupboard at home, according to a new survey carried out in January and released Wednesday, down from the 55% who were asked the same question a year earlier. The trade-in value of all those old gadgets: $47 billion based on the total number of smartphone owners in the country, up from $34 billion a year ago, according to the annual “Mobile Mountain Study” conducted by research group OnePoll for resale site SellCell.com , which obviously has a vested interest in tapping into this possible gold mine. “Americans are still unaware of the money they can make by trading in their old mobile,” says Keir McConomy, founder of SellCell.com.

Apple AAPL +0.54% has been able to convince consumers to buy the new model each year partly because it’s easy and inexpensive for customers to trade in their old ones to get a good chunk off the cost of a new one. But a significant number of users appear to miss out on this opportunity. In fact, consumers are sitting on $13.4 billion in old iPhones versus an estimated $9 billion this time last year, the survey found. Apple sold a record 51 million iPhones in the most recent quarter, the company announced last month, but that was still short of the 55 million that the market had forecast. While the resale market is still brisk, analysts warn that the smartphone market is becoming increasingly saturated.

Source: SellCell.com; survey conducted in January 2014

Of those who haven’t sold or traded in their old phones, 20% say they gave them away to a family member, friend or partner, 12% say they gave them to a charity, and 9% say they threw them in the trash, the survey found. Women are more likely to give their old phones to a family member or friend (22.5%) than men (18%). Security is less of a concern: Only 18% had concerns about personal data on their old phones versus 23% a year ago. So why are Americans hoarding old phones? Some 17% of smartphone owners say they were “too lazy” to get rid of them. However, nearly 40% of smartphone owners also say they hang on to old models so that they have a spare, while 36% say they “don’t know what else to do with them.”

As smartphone ownership has steadily increased, experts say there is also a greater pool of people with old devices. Based on census data and Pew Research—which was the basis for SellCell’s hoarding estimates—over 91% of U.S. adults own mobile phones, up from 65% in 2004. So even though the awareness of recycling phones has increased through resale sites like SellCell, Gazelle and NextWorth , it doesn’t appear to have outpaced the number of people already on their seventh iPhone or juggling Androids and even BlackBerrys, says technology analyst Jeff Kagan. “More people are buying smartphones for the first time,” he adds, “and they know nothing about this cottage industry.”

This article originally appeared on MarketWatch.com