Windows Phones increasing in price on eBay. A new trend?

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

Here's some interesting statistics that jive nicely with that earlier Australian report on the HTC Mozart. At least on eBay in the UK demand, as measured by increasing prices, has been on the upswing for the last few weeks for certain Windows Phone models, specifically the HTC Mozart, Dell Venue Pro and HTC 7 Pro--basically the creme of the crop, if you ask us.

The measurements, as graphed above, show a steadily increase in price since early September, just when Mango-fever was picking up. The jump in price is also fairly significant, with the 7 Pro going from an average of £240 to £350 in just 30 days.

Sure, it could be coincidence and perhaps other factors are at play here, but to our eyes, this is starting to look like a trend. We should note though, not all Windows Phone are benefiting from the "Mango bump" as the HTC HD7, Samsung Omnia 7 and and HTC Trophy are all down. Thoughts?

Update: WPCentral reader Oli S. lets us know the same trend shows on Amazon.de too, with the HD7 increasing from 330 € to over 400 € now and staying steady.

Big thanks to Lorenc for the info!

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

7 Comments
  • Are they still being manufactured? Sounds more like an issue of supply than demand. I was looking at the Omnia 7 for instance and it never was cheaper than in August or whatever. After that the price went up and the number of sellers went down. And the only reason it was so cheap in the first place was probably that WP7 has been a complete disaster and not selling very well. I mean, the HP Touchpad sold pretty good as well in the fire sale.
  • So WP7 = cheap and plenty, but doesn't sell well at all. Now it's in short demand but selling for significantly more?That doesn't make any sense. And the Touchpad only sold well because they sold it for like 1/4 of the original price. But we're not seeing those Touchpads increase in price because of it, even though they're hard to come by.
  • I forgot to point out that I think the DVP and the 7 Pro/Arrive is because they're QWERTY's and there's NO new QWERTY's in the pipeline from any of the manufacturer (not as far as I'm aware, anyway). For QWERTY fans like myself, there's very little WP choice. (actually, I hope the DVP goes down a bit...I'd like to pick up in addition to my HTC)However, the sudden popularity surge of the Mozart is a complete mystery.
  • I think one of the reasons why the trophy and others are down is because of the language limitations (Only 5 languages supported). Though I'm glad my Trophy does have a Dutch dictionary now, it is quite hard to sell it on Ebay since most people here would expect a Dutch interface. I bought it because I don't mind an English interface.I had the same problems a few years back selling an old WM device with an English interface, most people didn't bid because of that limitation.
  • HD7, Omnia 7 and Trophy are the ones going down? No surprise, they're the ones with announced replacements: HD7 -> Titan, Omnia 7 -> Omnia W (though not quite a perfect fit, but the Omnia 7 was holding it's value much better in the first place) and Trophy -> Radar...
  • I'm hoping Mr. Rubino see's this but out of curiosity... Isn't the Samsung Focus part of the "creme of the crop" also? Just wondering if the price of that phone is staying the same or going down because the Focus S is about to come out. Also on the I'm a WP7... app, the Focus worlwide has the most WP7 users and in the US was leading but is now matched with the HD7. For the longest time the Focus was in the lead for queit some time and hasn't lost the lead just yet.Any thoughts?
  • Focus is definitely creme of the crop, but this data comes from Europe and the Focus isn't sold there ;-) In fact, the Focus is only sold in a few markets.Having said that, giving a quick glance at US data only reveals a small "mango bump" but not as large as Europe.