Step 1: Get yourself some prices

I looked at the price history of a few popular telephone series over the first three sales years. The data was extracted from a popular price comparison website and normalized for weekly averages. I chose the most common Apple iPhones, and Samsung Galaxy series. 

If you plot the data over time, characteristic patterns appear between the manufacturers. Two trends can be seen in the pricing of the Samsung Galaxy series: The devices have gradually become more expensive over the iterations, but adopt very similar pricing patterns. They are introduced to the market in regular innovation cycles and have very steep price decline curves.

The pricing structures of Apple iPhones are also expected to decline. However, these a little more flat overall. The (simplified) finding is therefore that Iphones are more stable in terms of their retail price than Samsung devices. Remarkable is the price jump of the iPhone 6s model in the course of the introduction of the iPhone 8.

Step 2: Normalize them for release date

To make a comparison between a manufacturer's products, I normalize the prices by days since the release of the product. I'm looking at the first year, as we see a relevant part of the price drop at this time and before the launch of the next iteration.

Very exciting to have a look at at Samsung Galaxy: About 60 days after release, practically all prices (regardless of the initial price of the model!) have converged to approx. 610€. The drop in prices is stronger for the newer (and more expensive) models of the series like the Galaxy S10 or S20 than for the models up to the older Galaxy S6 & S7.

Apples iPhone prices show a flatter curve. Launch prices remain relatively stable and also the price progressions did not show a very broad bandwidth. However, the increase in release date prices for each new model is clearly visible. The mean value shows a dip, as the latest Iphone was significantly more expensive than the predecessor models.

Step 3: Normalize them for maximum price

The last, and most revealing step of the processing is the normalization not only to the release date but also to the release price. This allows the progress curves of the individual telephones to be compared with each other and across the manufacturers. In some cases, similar curves can be seen and it is also easy to tell when individual phones perform worse than their predecessors or successors.

It turns out that with many of the Samsung models analysed here you can save 20-30% of the sales price if you are willing to wait about 60 days before the purchase. Considering that you will then still own the latest model for about 300 days, this is a pretty good compromise.

In other words: For every day on which you do NOT buy the new device in the first 60 days, you will be "rewarded" with approx. 0.3% of the initial price. With a 900€ smartphone for example this is amounts to 3€ per day. Since the curves are not linear, however, you can save a lot more per day, especially in the first 2-4 weeks.

This curve is much flatter for Apples iPhones, which means that they are more stable in value. The price drops rather linearly and does not gradually increase. Within the first 100 days after release, the price tends to be around 90% of the original price.

Conclusion: So when should buy your new phone?

The results of this analysis were not particularly surprising in itself: Prices for new phones drop sharply in the first few months. But the similarity of the price trends was (at least for me) somewhat unexpected and I think one can obtain some insights for the purchase of the next phone:

• new phone generations become more expensive (jup, ok, I knew that much…)

• the price of new phone generations is falling faster than in the past

• the first <60-70 days see the strongest decline of the curve for Samsung Galaxy series

• the Apple iPhone is somewhat more stable

Remarks / Disclaimer:

• Due to the now rather long time period covered (the Galaxy S6 was launched in 2015, after all), I should actually adjust the prices for inflation. I am aware of that, but as a side project I have so far not made the effort.

• These figures apply to the German market. In other countries, the trends may be different.

• I do not take any liability for the information provided on this website. Use this information at your own risk.