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The lesson here is to buy used phones outright for cheap and hasten the decline of carrier lock-in. That's what I got out of the article at least.

The difference in depreciation between iphones and androud seemed pretty small to me, and probably represents the overall inflated price of the half-eaten fruit logo. I see laptops on craigslist with similar specs: $2000 for Mac and ~$500 for Dell. Like Billy Beane, I buy cheap and undervalued.

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I have got the exact opposite lesson: a 1 year old iPhone has lost 25% of its value, and it loses another 25% of the original value the next year. So you lose the same amount with an older phone

In other words - imagine a rich person buying a new iPhone every year and selling the old one to his poor friend. Both of them eventually pay the same amount for the phone, but the poor friend got a used one.

I think you might be misreading the graphs. According to the article a 1 year old iPhone depreciates by about 40%, and a 2 year old iPhone depreciates by around 65-70%.

Thus, a person selling their 1 year old iPhone would fail to recoup 40% of the sticker price overall while someone buying 1 year old phones and selling them a year later would fail to recoup all but 25% of the sticker price, give or take.

You seem to be right, but I think you mean 6 months instead of 1 year, from looking at the chart provided.

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