I'm a violinist, and actually have owned/played on several electric violins in the past. The most decent model (from sharmusic.com) that I tested back in 2006 costed $500. The fifty dollar ones just didn't cut it for me.
The point of the violin design, however, was so I could tie different aspects of performance (body movement, bow tilt, vibrato) to new parameters.
Previous designs actually didn't use iPhones or wiimotes. Rather, just DIY accelerometers. But, I wanted to use devices that people already had. So of course I wouldn't expect people to shell out cash to buy an iPhone just for this purpose. But for those existing iPhone users (who don't have a Wii), buying a Wiimote isn't too costly.