iPhone 4S launch drives record number of BlackBerry trade-ins

Gazelle, a website that specializes in buying, selling and recycling gadgets, said on Tuesday that BlackBerry trade-ins recently reached an all-time high. Speaking with CNET, Gazelle chief gadget officer Anthony Scarsella said his company saw a “spike” after Research in Motion’s recent BlackBerry service outage, which spanned three days in some areas, but that Apple’s latest iPhone is mostly to blame for the surge. “In the grand scheme of BlackBerry [trade-in] growth over the past month, it can be pretty much entirely attributed to the launch of the iPhone 4S,” Scarsella explained. Additionally, Android trade-ins jumped 72% during the past month, the majority from Sprint customers, although Scarsella said he couldn’t put his finger on an exact event that caused the increase.

Read