Like how are they going to manage that? There are basically 3 types of takers for iPhone's
- Rich idiots who just buy things based on cost just to show that they can buy costly things. They buy it even when it costs 1.5 Lac on ebay without any understanding what they are buying and they are the kind who have regularly bought older iterations of iPhone's thinking they are the new versions. Earlier sellers used to take advantage of this. Whenever a new iPhone gets released, they used to list the older models at high prices on ebay hoping that these idiots would end up buying them and they succeed too.
- Not so rich idiots who want to want to pretend or show off that they too fall into the first group by buying what ever the above group buys even if it breaks their or their parents banks.
- People who need an easy to use multimedia phone with a few smart phone like features and buy iPhone's with full understanding of its capabilities and limitations.
People who really need capable smartphones won't touch an iPhone with a 50 foot pole. My own sister chose to buy an Galaxy S6 Edge despite having a free iPhone 6s (which is also upgraded for free every year) at her disposal. Even a sub 10k Chinese android device would be more capable than an iPhone.
People who do understand and buy iPhones for its minimalist feature set and capabilities are rare. So that leaves the rich and the wannabes which has always been the main market in India and for that matter, that was also the main intended target user base for iPhone all over the world. Apple has basically built a cheaper version of what Vertu phones used to be.
So is selling refurbished phones really such a good idea keeping that in mind? iPhone has already lost its novelty factor and on top of that, if the first group knows that there are refurbished units are in circulation and anybody get them cheap, their own purchase would have no value and they will look for something else to buy. And if the first group stops buying, the second group would have no reason to buy them. The only group it would be attractive to would be the last group and I doubt there would be many of them to offset losing their main market.
So what would make them do that? Companies like these are bound by regulatory obligations in US (and maybe in some other markets as well) that they would be responsible for recycling of certain volume of e-waste in proportion to the volume of stuff they manufacture and sell. The waste they recycle does not need to be theirs. So currently, they end up paying large amounts of money to recycling outfits to procure and recycle waste on their behalf. I guess selling refurbished phones can also count towards recycling numbers.