Buy Used Cell Phones

Just weeks after its market release, the T-Mobile G1 is now to be sold at a discount at Wal-Mart.  It's a small $30 discount from the $180 regular price you pay when you buy one at a T-Mobile store.  It still comes with a 2-year contract with T-Mobile.

The eventual discount was expected, but not the when.  Normally, the discounts come in sometime within a several months to a year from release, or just when a newer product or replaces it.  But in this case, it's been barely three weeks since the release of the G1.

For the used cell phone market, this is not really such a good idea.  Nobody sells short on cell phones, particularly those which are aimed at the high-end consumers.  Early adapters don't look kindly at what Wal-Mart did, and they don't really appreciate that T-Mobile allowed it in the first place.

But if the G1, and T-Mobile, were to get a good chunk of the mobile phone market, this would be a good idea.  It's not a long-term solution, but it would make this phone as a viable option given the price point and the feature set.  It's no longer in the "near $200" market, but in the "mid-hundred" market.  It shouldn't be long before most of the other vendors and distributors would follow suit in selling the G1 at a discounted price.

Technologically, there has been no difference.  The G1 still runs on Android.  But financially, it should translate to more converts to the G1.  Even at $180, the G1 is at an attractive price, but with the price going lower to $150, it's not a $20 difference, but a $50 difference.  Which should be enough for more people to give it a second look.

As a side-bar, when Apple lowered prices on the iPhone, they also gave rebate coupons to the early adapters.  However, that was for the $200 difference in prices.