Samsung trade-ins way up on Apple's big iPhone 5S, 5C announcement day

Samsung owners are trading in their phones in increasing numbers during the lead-up to Apple’s big iPhone event today.

“We anticipate this year’s iPhone launch to be 2-3x bigger than last year,” gadget trade-in site Gazelle‘s Anthony Scarsella said today. “Already today, Gazelle has 93 percent more Samsung trade-ins than on the day of the Samsung Galaxy S4 announcement.

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In fact, Samsung trade-ins were up 127 percent more yesterday than before Samsung’s big Galaxy S4 announcement — and 233 percent more than before Apple’s iPhone 5 launch last year. Interestingly, while Samsung trade-ins are up 93 percent so far today, when the Galaxy S4 was launched, iPhone trade-ins were nearly 90 percent lower.

Which shows, Gazelle says, that “customers are far more loyal to Apple than Samsung.”

By the way, if you’re planning to sell your iPhone, Gazelle is offering to lock in the price it’s offering until the end of the week. Typically, resell prices go way down shortly after Apple announces new devices, since the market gets flooded with trade-ins. My 32GB iPhone 5, for example, would currently fetch $320 on the site. In addition, the company is running a sweepstakes that will see one lucky trader winning $1 million for trading in his or her device.

Almost half of current iPhone users plan to upgrade to the new iPhone 5S or another of Apple’s new models in the short term, so you might want to hurry.

Nearly two million people checked the current value of their iPhones on the site in August.