[Column] Used IT Market in Korea and Asia

People think of used market whenever financial crisis comes in order to cut down their cost.
As we all might know the used IT market is expanding all over the world. I would like to explain about the one of Korea here.
The newly developing countries such as Korea do not make efficient use of second-hand goods and their markets are poor, compared with the Western countries which are used to sell or exchange the useful old products on eBay. The reason is because Korean market has been rapidly growing so demand of brand new products is much greater compared to the one of second-hand products.

There are thousands of firms that handle used IT equipments in the world. And there are also countless companies among them earning over $100 million in one year. Used IT market has newly become one of the most desirable markets right after dot-com bubble burst in early 2000s.
However, Korea is nearly at the bottom of the consumption of Used IT products over the world. Used IT market based on Asia hasn’t been emerged fully and the companies participating in this market are almost small- scaled. This is due to not only the preference of new goods, also the lack of companies offering entire service with second hand products. Several companies in Korea tried to do secondhand market business once in the past, but they didn’t make it success because they couldn’t offer entire service customers need.

Nowadays, the overseas companies rather began their used products business based on Asia such as Japan and Korea. If you are the IT manager of your company you might have experience of receiving several offers to buy used parts from these overseas companies.
In practice, second-hand IT market is expanding all over the world whilst it is still being given a cold reception solely in Korea. Korea second-hand IT market is poor and even cannot be given a calculated scale even though Korea is the world’s leading IT nation, which implies that our used products are mostly exported or thrown away.

However, it is highly inspiring that a B2B market place for Used Computer Parts such as (www.tradebin.com) has appeared in Korea as well. Most participants of this website are overseas companies, but a few Korean companies have started doing their business at www.tradebin.com.
These kinds of firms have been aware that they need to provide customers with perfect testing, follow-up and after-sales service instead of just buying and selling trade used parts to maintain their business.
Server or network equipments have long-term life cycle Even though they are second-handed, so we are able to use them without any problems if we replace the parts at the right time.
In the near future, it is highly expected that used IT market would have a rapid growth more than now. Above all things, the awareness of second hand products has started to change positively and the maintenance market of used network equipments has become matured recently. Furthermore, the recycling of used IT parts has been increasing for cost reduction and Green IT caused by economic recession all over the world.