Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

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The fact that phones needs to be financed or subsidised by the carriers should tell you that they are WAAAY to expensive.

I'm still of the opinion that Apple needs to make a cheaper phone. Starting a $1100 makes this something only very few will purchase on their own. It's an absolutely insane price.

The iPhone SE starts at $600 (4000DKK) that is still way to expensive. I really wish they'd make a "base" phone for around $150 (1000DKK). I don't need the fancy big screen, I don't care about FaceID, the camera was good enough on the iPhone 7, I don't care about the sensors, I don't care about AI, I don't care about games. I just need a phone that can run a few very simple app and has BlueTooth and tethering.

> Starting a $1100 makes this something only very few will purchase on their own. It's an absolutely insane price.

not if you account for inflation.

$1100 is $905 in 2020 money.

basically iphones have become cheaper every year due to inflation.

I don't need the financing, I just take all the 0% financing I can get.

Apple caters to the premium market, diluting their brand with a cheap phone would be a dumb business decision on their part.

> diluting their brand with a cheap phone would be a dumb business decision

I don't even think that's their problem to be honest. People want an iPhone, and if they could get one at say $250, they'd get that model the majority of the time. Seeing that they have no problems selling $600 phones, then why not just take the higher amount.

It just sucks that you basically have no choice, either get an expensive iPhone or be stuck with Google on Android.

> if they could get one at say $250, they'd get that model the majority of the time.

I don't think that's necessarily the case, people have consistently bought the premium iPhone models over the much cheaper SE. You really can't generalize the buying habits of consumers as if they all have the same buying power. Intentionally not catering to buyers of lower buying power is exactly why green bubbles have a stigma in the US.

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