You're misunderstanding the economics. Most businesses entering a market charge less than cuatomers' marginal willingness to pay as a means of attracting customers, either with the goal of retaining a large share when they eventually raise prices (this is the "traditional" model) or with the expectation that technology will advance in a way that will allow them to maintain their low price and reduce costs to increase profit. Amazon and their "flywheel" is an example of this--they are betting that tech will reduce their delivery costs to the point that they can turn significant profit and current relatively profitless prices.
What this whole discussion misses is that phones have become a commodity, with the differences between iOS and Android shrinking to virtually nothing--same could be said for Windows and MacOS. Users increasingly live in the browser or unified UI apps and the physical engineering is arguably better now from some of these Chinese makers. As such, for how long will Apple be able to convince large chunks of western (increasingly just US) consumers to pay a large premium for an undifferentiated product? It's not like a luxury car that survives as visible status symbol (and even that mindset is mostly dead among gen z). I personally see it as hangover effects--just like it took consumers a decade or two to transition from US auto brands to foreign in the 1970s, with the old and ignorant making jokes about Japanese quality at exactly the moment they were being ripped off for overpriced big-3 autos.
