In the case of Apple vs Android I'd say Apple is doing pretty good and are arguably doing substantially better than Google in spite of not having followed this strategy themselves.
The difference is that most of Apple's complements are B2B suppliers and so are rather invisible to the general public, while many of Google's complements were formerly consumer-visible markets. So it's much more obvious when Google turns the web browser or ISP market into a commodity than when Apple turns the electronic supplier marketplace into a commodity.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billio...
If anything, Microsoft would have won over OEMs and been where Android is.
Or maybe a different company, like if Amazon didn't fail with Fire Phone. Perhaps that entity could have been more forgiving since they're not as aggressive with the same set of productivity services. But in general Google has lost that moat for the rest of the mobile era. At best they can hope for is a partnership.
Actually, imagine now homegrown Alternate-Android competitor that was based in China. Google would be cut from that too.
But why would they? They already capture 80%+ of the profit in the global cell phone market.
And, actually, it does have a tiered presence: iPad, iPhone, iPod, Shuffle. I'm not sure how many of those remain extant.
The goal would be staving off encroachment from below.
The average selling price of an Android phone is $202 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/309472/global-average-se...). That's still $150 less than the cheapest iPhone.
The average selling price of a tablet is still much less than the lowest cost iPad.
Apple doesn't sell iPods anymore except the iPod in name only iPod Touch.
Apple only has about 12% world wide market share in smart phones.
There's also the used-device market, as noted by another reader. I'd considered making that point as well, though uncharacteristically for me I decided to focus on a single thread.
When I sold my 3-yr old iPhone, which cost around $700 new, I got well over $200 for it. The net cost was under $500. Android phones might be cheaper, but you can't really sell them when you're done with them because there's always newer Android phones that are also inexpensive.
The same effect happens with Apple's desktops and laptops...by not offering a bargain basement tier, they foster a thriving resale market that's reliable enough that you can factor it into the price when buying a new device. Apple is essentially charging for both the primary sale and the secondary sale up front. Once you account for that, a lot of the difference in price between them and their competition goes away.
For instance, my son has one of these and it's a perfectly capable device.
https://www.amazon.com/Moto-PLUS-5th-Generation-Exclusive/dp...
At $200, the 1-2 generations behind used iPhone is very competitive with the slower, cheaper Android phones that you can buy new.
The phones you're comparing the iPhone to are second-tier phones. But, as I said in my original comment, second-tier iPhones are resale, not new.
The accellerated EOL impinges on this though.
They follow a different strategy: vertically-integrated walled garden.