A pavilion for second-hand smartphones opened on Sunday, 18 October, at AsiaWorld-Expo in Hong Kong, in phase two of the Global Sources show. SCMP writes that recycling platforms, refurbishers and automated-kiosk operators gathered there, hoping to use the city as a springboard for exports. The hall, the Global Mobile Exchange Pavilion, is co-hosted by the Hong Kong International Communications Electronic Chamber (HKICEC) and Global Sources.

SCMP counts more than 60 firms from mainland China, the United States, Britain, the United Arab Emirates, Japan and India. The show’s own release speaks of “nearly 60” companies from the same places, plus Hong Kong. Names include Zhuan Zhuan, ATRenew, US Mobile Phones Inc., Belong Inc. and ecoATM LLC. This is not a census of a grey market: it is a B2B stand, the first of its kind at the show, according to the organisers.

Phase two runs 18–21 October. Global Sources announces more than 2,100 Asian suppliers, over 4,000 booths and four tracks: mobile electronics, smart home, lifestyle and sport. John Kao, a vice-president of the shows, puts Hong Kong on an aligned regulatory frame, intellectual-property protection and proximity to the Greater Bay Area. A buyer, he says, can see supply, clear compliance and place an order in one visit.

IDC, cited in the same release, puts global used-smartphone shipments at 225.7 million units in 2024, with a compound annual rate of 4.9 per cent through 2029. Those figures are IDC’s, not ours. The threshold, the fair says, is not volume but compliant distribution: tested phones, data-wiped, aligned with EU WEEE standards, plus export services.

Hong Kong has been a transit node for used phones for years. That does not make waste legal. Local authorities treat devices that will not power on, or that have swollen batteries, as electronic waste, with strict import rules. Sunday’s pavilion sells itself as a “green” alternative: refurbished, not stripped. We have not checked, handset by handset, what is on the tables.

ATRenew, listed in New York, already announced in July a ReRe store in Hong Kong and the FoneSquare B2B market, with hubs in Hong Kong and Dubai. Sunday’s presence is a continuation, not the firm’s debut in the city. SCMP did not, in the free part of the piece, publish quotes or volumes contracted at the stand. The springboard, for now, is a four-day pavilion.

Image: Picuexmwiamo, AsiaWorld-Expo, Global Sources, 14 October 2017, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. Not the October 2026 pavilion.

Sources consulted: Second-hand smartphone traders eye Hong Kong as springboard for global exports — SCMP; October 2026 Global Sources Hong Kong Shows Phase II Opens Today — PR Newswire.