Their flagships are, sure, but the SE is extremely competitive in the US, especially when you consider their longevity and support. And then of course there's the used market.
I mean, if 87% of teens own an iPhone, then that's very much by definition NOT luxury, as luxury is necessarily exclusive to some degree.
> I mean, if 87% of teens own an iPhone, then that's very much by definition NOT luxury.
Yeah this is the point. Apple has a strong brand and pricing tactics that places itself as a high-end company. This branding works really well and Apple is perceived as luxury by many people, but the truth is that it creates consumer products and there's no luxury in that. If the iPhone was a luxury you wouldn't find it everywhere in almost all high schools. Luxury doesn't dominate a mass market.
Some tech guys seems to think that value comes solely by a sort of price/performance ratio. If you can get MORE POWER for less money then you are getting ripped off. The rest of the price is not justified, you aren't paying for anything else so you must be paying a luxury premium.
That's really a shallow way of analysing apple products. You pay more because the following is included: long time support (software updated and that continues to work without random behavior for 5yrs), really high quality control and higher quality components (no things that randomly stop to work after one or two years), great customer and tech support (yeah, non-tech people actually need it), seamless software integration, privacy and security guarantees. There are so much more things included in apple devices beside than tech specs and people find a lot of value in that.
If you're talking about an unlocked smartphone that you can install apps on, there is absolutely no such thing as a new Android phone for $20 that any American consumer can buy.
The Samsung Galaxy A03s is Samsung's cheapest, it's considered "ultra-budget", and it costs $160. The Moto G Pure, Motorola's cheapest, is also $160.
(Edit in response to comments: yes if you buy a locked phone with a plan you can obviously get it cheaper upfront, but you're just dividing the remaining cost monthly. It's not actually cheaper. You can also get iPhones "for free" upfront if you pay for them on installment plans either bundled with a plan or separate from one -- so "prices" for locked phones are utterly meaningless for comparing the cost of iPhone vs Android.)
> If you're talking about an unlocked smartphone that you can install apps on, there is absolutely no such thing as a new Android phone for $20 that any American consumer can buy. Or even close to it.
Hardly anyone buys a phone unlocked in the US. Most buy carrier locked devices and at the low end, it's mostly prepaid. I just bought a Samsung A03 from target that was for prepaid carrier Total Wireless for $10. I didn't activate it, I just use it for testing a mobile app on a lower spec phone.
> The Moto G Pure, Motorola's cheapest, is also $160.
Right now, you can get a Moto G Pure for $49 from three different no-contract pre-paid carriers at Wal-Mart.
On the other-hand, plenty of people will buy a locked phone direct from a carrier. The Moto G you mentioned only costs $35 from tracfone. You can't change carriers, but you still can install arbitrary apps.
And as mentioned, you can buy any top end iphone for likely free with a sufficiently expensive plan, how is that relevant? You do pay for the full price (often multiple times).
Just for the sake of argument, there are brand new android go phones in amazon. So, if you need a phone you can install apps on, $50-$200 being the base price, you can consider $1000 a luxury.
Erm. Every iPhone comes with a lightning cable in the box. You can also buy lightning cables from other manufacturers for considerably less than $19. Get your facts right.
Their flagships are, sure, but the SE is extremely competitive in the US, especially when you consider their longevity and support. And then of course there's the used market.
I mean, if 87% of teens own an iPhone, then that's very much by definition NOT luxury, as luxury is necessarily exclusive to some degree.