With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

>and everywhere else had it more expensive.

Once you correct for VAT and currency, you'll find a lot of foreign iphone sales aren't really expensive. USA pricing does not include taxes and the dollar is fairly strong now.

>Well Apple already knew certain people are buying at those prices, again why not make a product that fit those segment?

I think the larger issue here is that Apple can't maintain 2008 level pricing a decade later especially as China stops being so cheap for labor. Toss in US consumers buying on credit for 24 months and its a no-brainer we'd see price jumps. Apple isn't taking a cut on its margins, so it has to do a price increase eventually.

That's on top of the phones having expensive high quality components, NAND shortages, and the cost of rare earth elements going up every so often. Prices aren't scaling for components it seems. A high quality display in 2017 isn't the same price of one in 2008, plus inflation. A modern SoC now has to support HDMI, displayport, 4-8 cores, LTE, etc all come at a component cost as well as a licensing cost. Modern phones are more or less mini laptops now, so the dream of a 'simple' ARM device is long dead. We more or less have the desktop re-invented on ARM platforms and expect them to do anything from calls to word processing to 3D gaming. That's a far cry from the original iphone and its simple apps and simple OS.

Perhaps this is the old man part of me talking, but I absolutely fell in love with smartphones in the early days. My Treo was a wonder and the iPhone twice so. The simplistic aspects of it was incredible. Everything was snappy. Apps were a couple megabytes, if that. It did the minimum I needed and then some. Now, of course, that's all changed, but for a few years there I kind had the star-trek like device I always imagined. Now I'm back to a mini-desktop, lag, big complex apps, a near unusable mobile web, constant nags for reviews/notifications, etc. The only saving grace is that a lot of that is abstracted away from me as I move towards a lot of automation and voice interfaces (voice commands, google home, etc) and I simply developed lowered expectations of the mobile experience.

Wow, I forgot how bad it was. I have unlimited data, unlimited calling/sms, and (as of recently) free roaming in all EU countries for €30/month ($36), with T-Mobile in NL. So that's $432/year.

A $1k iPhone on it's own would cost ~ $40/mo if you spread it out over 24 months.

Strange how the US healthcare setup is largely unchanged over many years, yet the general perception is that it's suddenly total chaos. I'm not saying the status quo is best, but we didn't suddenly plunge into a crisis.

That doesn't protect you against accidental breakage. Outside of that, I rely on actual consumer protection laws, which aren't so hefty in the US - hence folks using credit cards to get some extra protection. It isn't like you are taking a big risk with Apple or your phone company ripping you off anyway.

http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar...

> US has the cheapest iPhone

It is interesting to note among Developed countries, the US has the cheapest everything.

Cars, computers, building materials, clothes, TVs. You name it, it is cheapest in the USA.

It is interesting to note this is because people in the US have much less disposable income than people in other developed countries. Companies can charge higher prices in other developed countries because people have enough money to pay it, but they can't in the US.