unfortunately though tech doesn't work that way with inflation. as technologies mature, the cost of production generally goes down as efficiencies from scale are found.
So while everything else being equal, the pricing should have a general decline over time. Not a dramatic increase.
PLEASE LISTEN ALL ... YES its not a price hike mathematically BUT it is, because tech gets way cheaper over the last decade!
Therefore the prices of apple stuff but also m$ and google etc are INSANE high ... they have started something nearly impossible making tech products close to double the price in a decade, when tech products in general are falling.
THEREFORE all this discussion about price is kind of annoying because its crystal clear that this companies hiking prices like crazy / JUST look at the iphone production price if You are still not sure . It may have doubled which it hasnt I gues but thats not a justification to double the consumer price!
from my point of view there is no more discussion about price needed / prices are unhealthy high and I hope the bubble bursts sooner than later!
I agree that something strange is going on. There are two possible explanations: (1) illegal price collusion, or (2) the discount was already priced in when the tech first launched.
With other consumer technology (computers, laptops, televisions, cameras, etc.), the price falls significantly as the technology matures. Accounting for inflation actually makes the fall in price even more dramatic. But with smartphones and tablets, as the technology matures, the prices seem be staying steady with inflation at best or even rising at worst.
This could be the result of illegal price fixing or collusion. I doubt Apple and Samsung and Google are directly colluding to fix prices, but they all source from generally the same suppliers, of which there are not so many. I wouldn't be surprised if suppliers of the priciest components (screens, SoCs, SSDs, RAM, battery, modem) are in fact doing some anti-competitive stuff to keep prices high.
The other theory is that the long-term technological advancements discount was priced in from the beginning. In other words, when smartphones first came out with a take-home price of ~$650, that was the actual cost of building and designing a smartphone with no profit. The profit came from the cost-reduction that would occur over time. Now they're just keeping it steady with inflation. The hugely competitive smartphone market of the 2010s supports this theory. It was a race to the bottom to wean out the weakest competitors, and now that the market has gelled around 3 or 4 competitors that have a collective 95% market share, there is no more downward pressure on prices.
Personally, I think both theories are true. I think low-tier suppliers like TSMC, UMC, and Samsung Semiconductor are colluding to fix prices or are otherwise engaged in anti-competitive practices. We know Qualcomm has been doing shady stuff too. I don't think there is much shady stuff going on with display suppliers just because there are so many of them. But advanced process node chips and modems, where there are very few competitors, I bet there's some illegal stuff going on. At the same time, I do think the discount was priced in early by the OEMs. Put another way, the OEMs learned from the 90s and early 2000s about pricing, and realized that if they delay profits for a year or so, adoption happens much quicker. So with smartphones/tablets, they priced in discount early and counted on future adoption and component cost-reduction to become their profits.
