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Why is the iPhone high priced compared to rival models?

M

mammadon

macrumors member
Original poster
The iPhone to me is still the king, but the HTC, Samsung and Google phones rival it somewhat. Even still, an iPhone costs about $US 1000. A Samsung Galaxy S or Google Nexus S cost about half of that! 😱

Jobs and co. probably don't care, since the iPhone has high enough market share. iOS may not in itself, but Android appears on a number of handsets. On a handset/model basis alone, I'm sure iPhone is perhaps the market leader. But the only reason I see rationally about this is a premium pricing strategy, or positioning the product so consumers make a distinction (,i.e. appealing to Apple fanboys). And evidently it works, since as I said the iPhone has a high relative market share.

Shouldn't Jobs and co. cut the market and get even more market share by dropping the price? 😀
 
Yeah,
Last time I checked 1000 was quite a bit higher than the actual retail prices. Someones trying to fanboy other systems and troll the iPhone forum.
 
I think the only place the iPhone is $1000 is in Antarctica 😎

as for the price of an iPhone vs other phones ... you get what you pay for
 
mammadon said:
The iPhone to me is still the king, but the HTC, Samsung and Google phones rival it somewhat. Even still, an iPhone costs about $US 1000. A Samsung Galaxy S or Google Nexus S cost about half of that! 😱

Jobs and co. probably don't care, since the iPhone has high enough market share. iOS may not in itself, but Android appears on a number of handsets. On a handset/model basis alone, I'm sure iPhone is perhaps the market leader. But the only reason I see rationally about this is a premium pricing strategy, or positioning the product so consumers make a distinction (,i.e. appealing to Apple fanboys). And evidently it works, since as I said the iPhone has a high relative market share.

Shouldn't Jobs and co. cut the market and get even more market share by dropping the price? 😀
Click to expand...

You're completely uninformed 🙄
 
I've seen some unlocked models sell at that price. But even still, I reckon the iPhone is tops, but not by far. I'm sure Jobs and co. are losing out to people who may opt for it but choose the other good handsets out there.
 
Apple OC said:
I think the only place the iPhone is $1000 is in Antarctica 😎

as for the price of an iPhone vs other phones ... you get what you pay for
Click to expand...

It's more than $1000 here in Brazil (converting to our currency $1000 = R$ 1700,00). Well, not the highest price, but still high. Others phones like Blackberry top models are more expensive.
 
Wowzera said:
It's more than $1000 here in Brazil (converting to our currency $1000 = R$ 1700,00). Well, not the highest price, but still high. Others phones like Blackberry top models are more expensive.
Click to expand...

maybe the iPhones for Brazil are shipped from the Antarctica Apple store.


just kidding ... I think the OP may be in the USA and is just exaggerating the price.
 
Wowzera said:
It's more than $1000 here in Brazil (converting to our currency $1000 = R$ 1700,00). Well, not the highest price, but still high. Others phones like Blackberry top models are more expensive.
Click to expand...

$599 USD = $1,000.20 BRL. Guess it does cost a thousand in SOME places.
 
iphones cost $199 for the 16gb and $299 for the 32gb. Most top end Android phones cost about $200 too (and i could be wrong but i think most of them have 16gb or less storage, and/or you can pay extra for a SD card to expand the memory for a roughly similar price/storage)

Either way, comparing what a private individual charges on the used market for an unlocked/hacked phone to what other companies charge for legit subsidized phones is a bit disingenuous. Or as mentioned above, uninformed.

Note, I am not a fanboy or taking sides - the android phones are great, the iphone is great. The above are just facts - comparable high end phones are priced similar in both the apple/android camps.
 
mammadon said:
I've seen some unlocked models sell at that price. But even still, I reckon the iPhone is tops, but not by far. I'm sure Jobs and co. are losing out to people who may opt for it but choose the other good handsets out there.
Click to expand...

If some people are willing to pay that, then good for them (or rather, the people who are making a killing off of it). That does not mean that that is what "Jobs and co." is selling them for. As someone already said, they sell for $599/$699 off contract. Not $1000. So yes, you are uninformed. Make that were uninformed.
 
JD914 said:
Because your original post is full of erroneous information.🙄
Click to expand...

How is it erroneous? For contract phones, the difference is not that much, granted. But for factory unlocked phones, there is a difference. In my country, we don't have iPhones on a contract basis, so this is perhaps why the factory unlocked price is high. A factory unlocked iPhone here costs equivalent of $US1000. Even some websites sell it at that price.
 
mammadon said:
How so?
Click to expand...

iPhone $599
Samsung Fascinate Galaxy S $579
Droid X $569
Droid 2 $559
HTC Evo $449

^
That's how you're unimformed. The iPhone costs more than other phones but it doesn't cost twice as much.

Not even close. If you're talking about other countries than you need to start a thread asking why it costs more in your country. You can't just make a blanket statement that it costs twice as much without offering any proof because for most of us, that's not true.

EDIT:
mammadon said:
Shouldn't Jobs and co. cut the market and get even more market share by dropping the price? 😀
Click to expand...

And as for this, they're building entire factories to make iPhones and they're selling faster than they can make them. They CAN'T get more market share. Lowering the price would accomplish nothing other than to lower their profits.
 
mammadon said:
How is it erroneous? For contract phones, the difference is not that much, granted. But for factory unlocked phones, there is a difference. In my country, we don't have iPhones on a contract basis, so this is perhaps why the factory unlocked price is high. A factory unlocked iPhone here costs equivalent of $US1000. Even some websites sell it at that price.
Click to expand...

🙄
 
mammadon said:
I've seen some unlocked models sell at that price. But even still, I reckon the iPhone is tops, but not by far. I'm sure Jobs and co. are losing out to people who may opt for it but choose the other good handsets out there.
Click to expand...

They are not losing out much since they can't make the iPhones fast enough to keep up with demand. Now, this won't always be the case and Apple will have to adjust accordingly.
 
an iPhone 4 is made out of stainless steel and glass. No plastic at all. It comes with more built in memory than lots of phones. The competition builds their phones out of plastic (often nice, luxurious soft-touch, but still plastic). It has a camera with larger light sensors than most phones as well

Plus theres the fact that apple is always higher priced than most competitors, and subsidized, the iPhone is the same price as its competitors.
 
mammadon said:
How is it erroneous? For contract phones, the difference is not that much, granted. But for factory unlocked phones, there is a difference. In my country, we don't have iPhones on a contract basis, so this is perhaps why the factory unlocked price is high. A factory unlocked iPhone here costs equivalent of $US1000. Even some websites sell it at that price.
Click to expand...

well that explains it. Factory unlocked. Those are always more expensive
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Price is a function of supply and demand.

If you can sell your widget/service/labor for X dollars, why sell for less?

Right now, Apple can sell all the iPhones they can make for their asking price. Scalpers can take that price even further in certain locales/situations.

Would you go to work for 25% less money every day just because you could technically afford to?

Doubt it.
 
Last edited:
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