E-commerce major Amazon is revamping its refurbished devices business ‘Renewed’ and discontinuing the sale of products that are externally reconditioned. Now, it will only sell the products which have been returned on its platform, and refurbished by its certified professionals.
The company has sent out mails to sellers on Renewed saying that the decision has been taking due to high returns and rejections. FE has seen the mail.
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A spokesperson of the company confirmed the development and said, “As part of our efforts to continuously improve our selection of refurbished products, we’ve decided to discontinue selling externally refurbished products.”
Any product, which is returned on Amazon, will continue to be checked and refurbished by the company’s professionals. It will then be listed on Renewed.
According to analysts, the market of refurbished devices, especially mobile phones, is getting concentrated with older players growing and smaller players shutting shop.
Data from Tracxn shows that the number of new companies that have come up in this space in India has fallen from 4 each in 2020 and 2021 to 1 in 2024. Globally, too, the number of new such companies was the highest in 2021 at 10. It fell to 4 in 2023 and only 1 in 2024.
“The refurbished device market is surviving mainly on mobile phones and there too over half are iPhones only,” an analyst said.
He added that for other products like laptops and hard disks, people now prefer buying a new one. This trend continues to gain prominence as EMIs becomes more popular.
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The market is likely to get tough for mobile phones as well as the demand for 5G devices would negatively impact 4G phones and below.
Renewed was introduced by Amazon in 2017, to buy quality refurbished electronic products including hard disks, laptops, personal computers (PCs), smartphones, joystick and others. Originally, these devices were tested and certified to work and look like new by a qualified technician or a third-party refurbisher.
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