It was a busy end to the month with various events happening over London’s #CEweek2025, the Circular Summit and CCS Insights excellent Predictions event. It was great to meet many subscribers and to hear such positive feedback. On that note, last month’s poll was pretty clear (in percentage terms), so the monthly round up will stay, at least for the time being and here for your reading reading pleasure are a round up of items on periphery that interested me over the last two months…
Markets
A major systematic review published in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources confirms what many have suspected: carbon offsets are fundamentally broken. The study by Romm, Lezak, and Alshamsi1 analysed research covering nearly one billion tons of credits and found that offset programs routinely overestimate climate impact by factors of 5-10 or more. The authors conclude that these aren’t fixable problems but rather structural flaws inherent to counterfactual-based crediting. This adds academic weight to the concerns I raised about avoided emissions credits in consumer products last November2. The paper recommends phasing out non-removal offsets by 2035 and focusing exclusively on durable carbon dioxide removal with geological storage, a far cry from the forest and renewable energy credits saturating today’s voluntary market. Don’t get me wrong, repairing, refurbishing, remanufacturing and recycling / reclamation are fundamental to the secondary market and must continue. They are the right thing to do. But, for businesses making climate claims based on offsetting, this research should serve as a warning.
Mobile Dealer fraud made the FT this month with an article suggesting the cost to UK operators is somewhere north of £200m annually3. The scam involves criminals obtaining customer log in details, posing as an employee of their telecoms operator and offering a great deal on a new phone. Once the customer consents, the crims instruct the phone to be sent to a different address where it’s collected and then resold on the black market (I thought about it, but couldn’t afford the libel lawsuit). The fraud has jumped by 650% to more than 16,000 devices in the first half of 2025.
For those interested in phone and gadget insurance, the FCA General Insurance Data for 2024 was released last month. The data covers claims frequency, claims acceptance rates, claim severity and complaints. It’s provided on a banded basis so as not to give to much away and can be viewed at the product or provider level. It’s a useful benchmark and I plan to provide an deeper look in a future article4.
Companies
VMO2 Q32025 earnings release again included a statement along the lines of total mobile revenue decreased with broadly stable service revenue more than offset by a reduction in low margin handset revenue. This quarter the reduction was 5.4% or £17.3m in real terms5. That’s on top of the 5.2% reduction last quarter taking the nine month drop to £51.5m or 5.7% compared with first nine months of FY2024. No surprise then that the marketing bods are joining in with the sneaky supermarket Christmas creep and promising that us Brits can bag up to £541 for Christmas from our old tech with O2 Recycle6. Still I wouldn’t go banking on Playstation5’s for everyone just yet given the value gap that continues to weigh down the Trust Pilot scores7.
DT, Vodafone, TEF and EE’s latest quarterly results are all due in November, but other earlier Q3 handset indicators faired just as badly as VMO2. Whilst KPN’s overall results were moderately flat, non-service revenues were down 12% yoy due to lower handset sales8. Equipment sales for Orange in France were down 6.0% although Poland was up 4.2% in the quarter after an 11% drop in the first half of the year9. But don’t worry, the iPhone17 and seasonality knights in shining armour should appear in Q4 so we can all relax.
Which, according to Apple’s buoyant financial release10, will be a certainty. Wouldn’t it? Whether or not sell-in equals sell-out, we will have to wait and see. But, there’s a hint in the financials some of the new sales are headed our way. Overall, iPhone sales were up 6.1% in Q42025 at $49,025m, with total annual sales hitting $209,586m, a 4.2% increase over FY2024. Total European sales (all product categories) for Q42025 grew 15.2% to $28,703m totalling $111,032m for the year which is up 9.6%. Assuming iPhone sales in Europe, represent the same percentage of sales as they do globally (47.8%) would mean an additional $1,806m worth of iPhones or approximately 1.64m devices for European shores. However, it’s worth noting that Europe’s growth (+15.2%) significantly outpaced iPhone’s global growth (+6.1%), which could suggest either: Europe is seeing stronger iPhone adoption; services/other products are growing faster in Europe, or; some combination thereof.
Back to O2 Recycle. I reported on Likewize replacing Ingram Micro as the service provider last month. However, I had completely missed the news that they had also launched a new Packaged Bank Account with Santander11. Having existing mobile insurance through packaged bank accounts or add-ons to home policies is one of the main reasons mobile device buyers decline insurance at the point of sale12. Generally, the benchmark for packaged banks accounts is about 10% of the overall current account base. With Santander having almost 11million current accounts in the UK, that could add up to a material dent in the addressable market for the traditional mobile insurance channels.
As competition in the secondary markets continues to intensify, especially for “indepedents” versus the carriers and manufacturers, I’ve previously stated that I expect partnerships to increase as a way of securing distribution13. Last month we saw Recommerce announce a partnership with Vodafone in Germany. This month it’s Backmarket’s turn with Bouygues in France14. Backmarket’s refurbished devices will be sold across Bouygues’ retail network by the end of the year and will offer the same money back guarantee and warranty as the online marketplace. I can imagine these physical partnerships are going to consume a significant portion of higher grade devices, adding a bit more pressure on supply constraint and I wonder if there are minimum supply guarantees. Overall though, this is a good thing. There’s a positive down-sell option for the retailer and getting refurbished devices physically in front of the consumer is going to remove the condition guesswork at the point of sale.
In other Backmarket news, I’m unclear if their sparkly new Soho New York store is a permanent, temporary or see-how-it-goes type thing. According to the release the store is open until the 21st of December15, and the run up to the holiday period will surely general enough footfall to workout ongoing viability. Services offered include device diagnostics, cleaning, screen replacement and of course trade-in.
With three physical stores in Bremen and over 350 purchasing partners including Expert and Letmerepair, mySwoop have been building their multi-channel experience for sometime. Continuing the partnerships theme, they’ve now extended their offline trade-in partnership with Euronics to include their online trade-in as a service offer as well. The new partnership allows Euronics customer to value their old devices digitally and offset the price of new tech accordingly.
In a major validation of the physical refurb trend, MediaMarkt, possibly Europe’s largest consumer electronics chain is in the process of launching their own brand refurbished devices in the Netherlands and shortly across the Benelux region16. MediaMarkt’s online store already offered new phones and marketplace refurbished devices, but after a trial period in ten stores over the summer the nationwide store launch is now underway. Customers can trade-in a device for a discount on a new or refurbished device, or simply buy a refurbished device directly.
If you don’t know CHG-Meridian, being one of the major technology leasing behemoths and the balance sheet behind devicenow, you should probably look them up. Anyway, a year after launching their eTender Smartphone and Tablet auctions17, they’ve added barcode scanners and handheld computers as well as European stock18. Historically, smartphones have never been huge for the B2B leasing companies, but for other asset classes, it’s worth a reminder that with €2.5bn in lease originations in FY2024 and €7.9bn in leased assets, they have significant and specialist scale.
Investments
If you’ve been reading this substack for a while, you’ll know that my predictions (e.g. Foxway) don’t always work out. In this particular instance I am more than happy to have underestimated Refurbed’s ability to attract investment. On the basis of the recently published FY2024 accounts I suggested that securing bridge financing would be about the best option with current economics. It turns out that between new and existing investors, management have been able to grab €50m in new capital19. Good stuff. New investors include Alex Zubillaga at 14W and Orilla Asset Management. Some of the funds are sidelined for UK expansion which is one of only a few gaps in their large European market coverage. Shortly after the announcement, they launched their marketplace in Belgium, which was likely on the cards anyway. After the profitability announcement mid-year, there is clearly further confidence in the FY2025 numbers. Congratulations to all involved. Not only is it great for Refurbed, but a shot in the arm for a sector under material pressure to show results.
Founded in 2005, Optofidelity has forged a leading position in display and smartphone testing and has built a deep list of bluechip clients across the globe. It perhaps indicates Assurant’s commitment to improving their own trade-in business that they have acquired the Opto’s portfolio of mobile device test automation technology20. There was no current report filing which means the transaction consideration was non-material from Assurant’s perspective but it’s an interesting capability add-on nonetheless.
Ex-Swappies Max Hasselblatt and Ringo Nurmi officially launched Vendy, AI-driven buyback stations, on the back of a €1m raise. Following in the footsteps of ecoATM and GetRe, the raise will help get 50 kiosks live across Sweden after a clearly successful pilot with leading Swedish retailer ICA. Investors include early stage specialists Antler and consumer specialists, Bust. Good stuff.
Regional development company ROM InWest led €2.5m in funding for ThePhoneLab. The Netherlands based repair and refurbishment company will apply the funds to expand beyond the existing 16 stores in their home country as well as market development into Germany and Belgium21. The idea of a large scale walk in-repair store appeals enormously from a consumer convenience and trust perspsective, but it clearly it has to be done right. Something that ThePhoneLab appear to executing well.
On the other hand, once I’ve got to the bottom of Assurant’s FY2024 final iSmash write-offs, I will report on more fully.
Finally, probably the biggest news was the French operator tripartite offer to break up SFR22. The €17bn offer was quickly rejected by Altice. Rather than the more usual direct takeover, the buyout would have seen Bouygues taking 43% of the assets, Iliad 30% and Orange 27%. All three would have had some share in the consumer business, whilst the B2B assets would have been split between Bouygues and Iliad. The continuing spat between the EU Commission and European operators over consolidation feels like it took a new turn this week with senior EU official Guillaume Loriot suggesting that merger control is not about scale. That’s all well and good, but the cost of testing that hypothesis is significant.
Many thanks to my subscribers, your engagement, questions, and feedback make this research worthwhile. A warm welcome to new readers and special recognition to paying subscribers who make deep-dive analysis like this possible. Quality research takes time, and I’m grateful this is where you’ve chosen to invest your attention and research budget. As the secondary market continues to evolve, I’m beginning to explore new ways to deliver more value to this community.
Peace,
sb.