Kazi Najib Ashraf: Najib’s corner

NAJIB,S corner VIP article Around 6 years ago, Brightstar was the first company to have organized the sale and marketing of pre-owned graded device in the Middle East. Before that it had been a sporadic business with products coming from all over the world and that too without any specific focus. There was money to be made and traders basically kept to themselves when it came to the sources and target markets.

The advent of Brightstar had been a welcome sign and steadily the business started growing at a rapid pace with Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan taking the lead followed closely by Yemen and Afghanistan. With diminishing margins in the new devices, many traders started looking at the used phone business as an add on but still there were a few companies indulging full time in the used device business. For Yemen and a selected market in Iraq, it had been the CDMA devices whereas the rest of the markets had the influx of iPhones and Android phones.

Brightstar also perfected the buyback scheme globally and started the scheme in the Middle East as well with selected Network Operators and Retailers; Did it work? Actually not really, and we will get to that later.

The new used devices market competition

In addition to Brightstar, Redeem, PCS Wireless, Cenwood, HKG2 and many others made UAE the central logistics centre for the marketing and sales of used devices in addition to many others setting up shops with freight forwarders. The flow of used business went something like this in the UAE, Middle East: