There’s a huge untapped market for second-hand phones and laptops in Kenya and around the world. That’s according to the 2016 data released by Deloitte East Africa on Technology, Media, and Telecommunications (TMT) sectors.  At the start of 2002,  Instant messaging, e-mail, e-commerce, maps, search engines, photos, videos and other online services that are now routinely accessed via smartphones were predominantly PC-based. Over the last 15 years, connectivity has become steadily faster, enabling many new categories of service to become mainstream, including a number of current staple applications: search engines, social networks, video-on-demand, e- and m-commerce, app stores and online video games.

Here are the 10 things we learned from the Deloitte report.

1. The second-hand smartphone market is valued at $17 billion
2. 65% of iPhones have an afterlife. This means used iPhones are highly traded
3. M-Commerce in Kenya: 60% of Kenyan shoppers are held back from online shopping due to poor user experience / user interface.
4. Who do you trust to handle your mobile payments? 60% of Kenyans interviewed said they trust Telcos while only 35% said banks
5. 63% of used phones are available for sale. This means that there’s a huge market for second-hand phones in Kenya. 26% of used phones are kept for parts
6. 16% of all phones in Kenya are lost. Can you believe it?
7. 20% of Kenyans who upgrade their smartphones will either sell or trade them.
8. 1 in every 5 phones sold will be a used phone from the black market
9. 60% of Kenyans are afraid of making virtual transactions over security issues. Only 34% will make online purchases on mobile money
10. Laptops are not dead: 85% of millennials in 13 developed countries had access to a laptop in 2015

You can download the full report here

By Francis Waithaka,