Back Market’s Pre-Black Friday snapshot offers a useful signal for anyone watching the secondary-device economy.
As I have concluded in our most recent research findings, refurbished tech has firmly crossed into the mainstream. Search activity on the marketplace – drawn from millions of users – shows a clear pattern heading into peak season. Consumers are prioritizing quality, longevity and practical performance over the newest spec sheet, and the scale of the shift is becoming harder to ignore.
Apple remains the gravitational center of the segment. Back Market reports that generic iPhone searches are up more than 60% month over month. Mid-generation devices like the iPhone 13, iPhone XR and iPhone SE are converting at the strongest rates, which mirrors broader industry data.
IDC’s recent forecast indicates that global shipments of used smartphones alone will grow by 3.2% year-over-year in 2025, while the worldwide market for new smartphones is projected to grow only 1% over the same period. Apple now accounts for more than half of the global secondary-market smartphone share, a dominance that extends into refurbished laptops as MacBook search volume climbs across all major markets.
The same pattern is emerging in non-IT categories. Search volume is rising for refurbished Dyson vacuums, SharkNinja appliances and high-ticket beauty devices like the Dyson Airwrap, all product types that historically had little structured resale infrastructure.
Retro equipment is gaining traction as well: iPods, point-and-shoot cameras, handheld game systems and older audio gear continue to attract buyers looking either for distraction-free devices or nostalgia-driven experiences.
The Back Market report confirms a trend spotted several months ago by Compliance Standards research: The economic sweet spot for reuse sits firmly in mid-generation, still-supported hardware.
Phones and laptops two to four years after launching now drive most of the margin. They meet performance expectations, receive security updates and avoid the high price of new models. That aligns with circular-electronics research showing that most of the environmental and financial benefit of reuse comes from extending the life of relatively modern devices, while older hardware quickly drops into commodity-only territory.
The diversification of refurbished interest into household and personal-care devices has implications downstream. These products eventually enter e-scrap streams and many contain complex housings, non-removable batteries and mixed plastics that complicate dismantling.
A growing proportion of the refurbished market now involves equipment that didn’t traditionally flow through ITAD channels, meaning processors will eventually receive a more varied material mix, often without the high metal content that historically supported recovery margins.
Back Market’s search and conversion figures are proprietary, but they track with trends many refurbishers and enterprise disposition providers have been reporting: strong demand for mid-range Apple and PC hardware; widening consumer comfort with refurbished appliances from premium brands; and a steady, if niche, appetite for retro gear that justifies selective remarketing instead of automatic shredding.
As OEMs expand certified refurbishment programs and marketplaces refine quality controls, the structure of the secondary market is increasingly shaping which device categories remain in circulation and which drift sooner toward shredders, optics and recovery lines.
In that sense, the report is less about holiday shopping and more about signaling where reuse value is consolidating. And so for companies operating in the secondary market such as ITADs, this reinforces which cohorts deserve triage for resale and which should move directly to downstream processors.
For e-scrap operators, the data clarifies what the next few years of inbound streams will look like: modern smartphones and laptops staying productive longer, while unsupported devices – 3G handsets, early LTE phones, aging PCs, low-spec tablets and older home electronics – feed a growing volume of low-value material.
Data and insights from Back Market and Compliance Standards confirm that the market for refurbished devices is indeed expanding, but so is the volume of equipment that won’t qualify for a second life. Understanding which categories anchor demand today helps predict what will eventually land on the sorting lines tomorrow.
