- Some people are selling their secondhand iPhones and advertising them as having TikTok pre-installed.
- TikTok isn’t available for download in the US Apple and Google Play stores.
- Now, iPhones with the apps are listed on eBay and Facebook Marketplace with prices well above retail.
People on eBay and Facebook Marketplace are finding a new way to market their used iPhones — by capitalizing on TikTok being removed from US app stores.
Sellers on these marketplaces have listed used iPhones well above their retail prices, and advertised in the listing that the devices have the banned social media app pre-installed.
According to BI’s scan of eBay early on Friday morning, hundreds of listings for secondhand iPhones featured keywords like “iPhone,” “TikTok installed,” and “unlocked. At press time, the search term “iPhone TikTok” yielded more than 45,000 results on the shopping platform.
The same is true of Facebook Marketplace, where a search of the term “iPhone TikTok” yielded hundreds of listings.
Some listings also indicated that the products would come shipped with CapCut, the video editing app by ByteDance, installed. To prove that the apps are installed, several sellers included screen recordings and screenshots of the phones, showing the apps on screen.
While most are newer models like the iPhone 14, 15, 16, and Pro variants, some sellers are also trying to let go of older models like the iPhone 7. One eBay listing put up a used iPhone 7 for sale for $3,000.
And it isn’t just the volume of listings that’s notable — it’s the prices, too.
For one, an “iPhone 14 with THE LATEST UPDATE of TikTok & CapCut” on Facebook Marketplace was listed early Friday for $20,000. And an “Apple iPhone 8 Plus – TIKTOK & CAP CUT – Gold (Unlocked)” was listed for $3,363 on Friday.
BI also saw eBay listings priced in the six figures — including one for a black Apple iPhone 15 Pro “with Tik-Tok and cap-cut,” listed for more than $4.9 million.
For reference, the iPhone 7’s pricing started from $649 when it was released in 2016, per Apple’s press release that year.
According to Apple’s prices at press time, the iPhone 14 to 16 models cost between $599 and $1,599.
And some buyers are already making moves on eBay. At press time, one listing on eBay, an iPhone 15 Pro Max going for $461, had received 61 bids.
Representatives for eBay and Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Online marketplaces are abuzz amid TikTok turmoil
BI’s scan of both platforms on Friday morning showed that most of the TikTok-loaded iPhone listings on eBay and Facebook Marketplace were posted this week.
TikTok went dark for its 170 million US users on Sunday, a day before the Supreme Court’s deadline for the app to stop its US operations and adhere to its divest-or-ban law.
But hours later, its operations were restored. On Monday, shortly after his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to pause the ban, which gives TikTok another 75 days to devise a game plan.
While users who already had TikTok installed on their devices can continue using it, Apple pulled the app from its app stores in the US on Sunday, preventing new downloads.
A Sunday notice on Apple’s website read: “TikTok and ByteDance Ltd. apps are no longer available in the United States, and visitors to the United States might have limited access to features. Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates.”
Google Play, too, has removed ByteDance apps from its platform.
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas — who sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — and Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska wrote in a joint statement on Sunday praising tech companies for complying with the TikTok ban.
“We commend Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft for following the law and halting operations with ByteDance and TikTok, and we encourage other companies to do the same. The law, after all, risks ruinous bankruptcy for any company who violates it,” the statement said.
Trump said he would be open to Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison buying TikTok to keep it operating in the country and said that the US should own half of the app.
Representatives for TikTok did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, sent outside regular business hours.
