My understanding has been that Apple's orientation toward protecting privacy has been rooted in the fact that it makes most of its money from hardware sales, and therefore doesn't need to track people for ads, or to sell data (at least not to the same degree as companies whose profits are based mostly on such things). But if Apple starts selling phones at a low price, how will its motivations be different from, say, Google's? Maybe it can have the simple model of selling App Store access and other services, without resorting to the "your users are your product" model. But it seems like the the line will be thinner and the temptation greater. In the end, Apple's behavior will probably be determined purely by how much marketplace advantages it gives them to be able to tout such advantages. And my impression is that the average person really doesn't care that much, even if HN readers do.