You are completely misinterpreting your experience.
I worked at AT&T when it was still McCaw Cellular, through the AT&T years, then the AT&T Wireless spinoff, including the Analog to Digital transition, One Rate plans, and subsidized phone plans. In addition to being an employee I have also been a customer of McCaw/AT&T since people had hardwired cellular handsets in their cars. You remember those coiled, corded handsets in some cars? That was me. So believe me, I was there and I saw both sides.
iPhones were never $200. The absolute cheapest iPhone was the SE in 2016 at $400. They were massively subsidized. Read any tech article from the time.
By the way, we were profiting on the subsidy. If you multiply the extra cost of the subsidized phone plans by 24 months, the total exceeds the subsidized amount. People actually complained about this, and rightfully so.
Yes it is true that when your 2 year contract ended, your plan rate did not go down. You see this as solid evidence that the phone was never subsidized in the first place, but this is a misinterpretation of what is happening.
The rate didn't go down because (A) we don't just change customer's plans willy nilly, so we are not going to automatically switch you to the unsubsidized phone plan, and (B) we are not complete idiots--it's extra money every month for us. If you don't want to take advantage of the subsidy every two years, that's on you. We were perfectly happy to take the extra profit.
Ultimately, your other point is sort of correct. Yes the real, MSRP cost of the iPhone has been steadily increasing. But not $200 to $1000, that is an unfair comparison of a base model phone to an upper model phone. It's more like $500 to $700 (base iPhone 3G to base iPhone 8).
