I think you're being a bit defensive here because you purchased the phone and don't want to feel like you were taken advantage of by Apple. What I said in my comment is that some people overextended themselves to get the latest phone and thus perpetuated the inflated price.
The general consensus among owners of the phone and tech reviewers is that whilst nice, it is not worth $1,000 and most reviewers told people to look at other flagships before pulling the trigger on an iPhone just because it's the newest model of a line of phones they've bought year in year out like clockwork.
Essentially this is the first iPhone where reviewers basically told people, look don't just buy this because you always bought iPhones, this is different, this is $1,000 and you can't just ignore the cheaper priced competition which are just as good at the fundamental things you're doing with your phone.
To answer your question about who dictates the price of a phone, clearly the market decides. The Essential phone came out at a high price, didn't sell, they knocked the price down and offered partial refunds to early adopters. That's how things should happen. For Apple they have a very large market for themselves so they don't need to do those things but they have lowered orders from their suppliers and will be attempting to lower the price with the followup by using more affordable and technically inferior LCD IPS displays instead of OLED.
I do not wish to have a confrontation with you, I'm just writing honestly my thoughts.
