The iPhone Economy

Millions are feverishly refreshing their computer screens and checking their phones more than usual in hopes of getting a shipping update about their iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus pre-order. While for many it gives them the iPhone with the larger screen they've been waiting years to buy, there's a much larger and deeply entangled ecosystem that lives for the announcement and sale of a new iPhone.

Media outlets / Websites

This is where it all starts. Even though the iPhone 6 hasn't even officially gone on sale I'm sure there's an editor somewhere scanning sites for details on what the iPhone 7 will be. If there isn't anything to be found, you can expect rumors to surface or an artist's rendering to be floated. Between the lines of people looking to be the first to buy one, the stories involving iPhone-related thefts or to highlight how hard they are to find, the iPhone ends up being a great topic of discussion. It's a shoe-in to drive page views and usually fodder for combative comment threads. IPhone articles beat the drum and fan the flames.

Exporters

This group helps to explain why it's so difficult to buy an iPhone when it becomes available. While it might sound insane to pay $649 plus tax for an entry level iPhone 6, there are people in countries all over the Caribbean, Latin America and elsewhere who'd be willing to pay significantly more to brag to their friends and family that they have the latest iPhone. I've been told that in some countries a new iPhone can fetch well over $500 over the MSRP. If you meet someone willing to buy one for $1,400 as long as it's unlocked, chances are that it will end up being used somewhere else in the world and these are the people that help get it there.

Buy Back Sites

Sites that ask people to send in their phone in exchange for a check love new iPhone releases. People who are normally rational and logical throw all that out of the window and ignore all of the other places you can sell a phone for top dollar. The funny part is that these same companies turn around and take the phones people sell them and place them for sale on eBay themselves in hopes of getting the highest price. For many, this alleviates a lot of anxiety and time associated with creating a listing and having to pack and ship the product but the convenience usually comes at a steep cost.

Unlockers

AT&T and T-Mobile iPhones are carrier locked meaning they aren't able to work with international carriers right out of the box. An unlocker is able to take the serial number of an iPhone, its IMEI, and make it so that restriction is lifted. A service I've used recently notified me that their service will be going from $15 to $46. With so many dollars flowing around it's hard to fault them for momentarily inflating prices. The price is steep but $46 turns your $649 AT&T iPhone into a $1,200+ eBay listing.

Carriers

Over the years, wireless carriers have made it increasingly more difficult to upgrade your phone each year for free. They have to protect the subsidy they provide but the other impact is that each year there is a growing faction of people who are willing to pay for early upgrades or to pay off their device payment plan in order to upgrade. Some go so far as to open an entirely new line in order to get a discounted iPhone. With fees to upgrade, activate and terminate a line, carriers love being in the iPhone business.

There are a lot of other players that are also involved such as accessory makers and app developers but I wanted to highlight a few of the lesses known parts of the equation and provide additional insight for some of the parts that most would be familiar with. Each phone release from Sony, Samsung, LG or any of the other manufacturers piques the interest of some but everyone knows what you're talking about when you say "iPhone." That universal connection and appeal helps to fuel this cycle which leads the iPhone economy to grow year after year.