Yes everyone should be rich enough to buy a 1000 dollar Apple phone. Also, you get to decide if I want more than one camera app or not ?
Stop imposing your world view on others. Android made smartphones accessible to many people across the globe. You won't mention that would you ? Won't fit your narrative.
> Yes everyone should be rich enough to buy a 1000 dollar Apple phone.
I bought an iPhone 7 from Net10 about 5 months ago for $220 shipped. It requires a minimum $20 a month plan for 12 months before I can unlock it. About 2 years ago I got my mom an iPhone SE for $140 with similar plan/unlock. Both brand new.
They’re not everyday prices and not the newest model but it is possible to go iOS without breaking the bank.
The "1000 dollar apple phone" thing is such a weird myth.
My wife has been using the iphone 5s for years now, because the later models are too big for her to hold comfortably. It originally came out in 2013. It is still supported by Apple, and hers currently runs iOS 12.4, which came out last month. She is on her second 5s, because she dropped her first one in the lake trying to take a picture of our dog. I use it from time to time to help pull up music or navigation in the car and it runs just fine, it's a perfectly usable phone.
These days, you can get a "renewed" one for less than a hundred dollars, unlocked, straight from Amazon.
Android is the phone ecosystem where you actually need to spend a thousand dollars* on phone hardware, because all of the inexpensive android devices are cheaply made garbage that feel like they should come filled with candy. They are stuffed with manufacturer bloatware (if you're lucky, or malware if you're not), and are obsolete right out of the box. If you spend a hundred dollars on an android phone, I absolutely guarantee you that you will regret it.
I'm not exactly an apple partisan here, I work on android apps for a living, I've used android phones for years, I actually like the Android OS and I want it to thrive, but the current state of the overall android hardware and software ecosystem, outside of the very high end devices that most people frankly can't afford, is just dire.
*- I have a pixel 3 XL, I know a thing or two about spending a thousand dollars to get a usable android device.
There are enough cheap to mid range devices that do the job in Android. I dont think you understand the value of even 100$ in a developing country. Most people don't care about updates in this scenario. They want a phone that works. And far more people in the lower strata have access to cheaper Android phones than Apple.
If you are looking for a brand-new phone in the solidly mid-range for around $250, you can look at pocophone or OnePlus for smaller but still well-known companies making excellent phones. These phones compete in pretty much every way with the more expensive offerings by google or samsung, and have no vendor bloatware.
OnePlus's latest models have become a bit pricier, going on $450, but you can still buy the oneplus 6 straight from them for a good price.
So your iPhone 7 actually costs $220 + $20 * 12 = $460
Is that correct?
Not sure what the situation is over there, but in my country I've got a $5 prepaid plan with unlimited minutes, 10 GB monthly bandwidth and I can stop paying at any time.
So I hope you don't go around pretending that the $20 you're paying per month isn't for that phone ;-)
Again why should consumers not buy a newer phone for cheaper. Who are you to tell them what's right for them ? In India $220 dollars is a luxury many people can't afford.
An iPhone SE is $238 in India, $299-449 in the US. Similar pricing exists for the iPhone 6 & 6s, and the iPhone 7 is quite good while still well under $1000 most places.
The average wage in India is a little above 5 dollars a day. That's about 160 dollars a month. Translated to American wage standards, the $238 dollar iPhone would cost about $6000 (1.5 the average monthly wage).
A $238 dollar smartphone is inaccessible to most people in India. A "well under $1000 dollar" iPhone much less so.
Dollar values don't really translate as well to other countries as much as we'd like. Translating the price to a month's wage can bring a lot of perspective.
You'd probably want to use median rather than average for such comparisons - I don't have those on hand right now, but it'd be interesting to compare/contrast.
> Xiaomi has now been India’s top smartphone seller for eight straight quarters. The Chinese electronics giant shipped 10.4 million handsets in the quarter that ended in June, commanding 28.3% of the market, research firm IDC reported Tuesday. Its closest rival, Samsung — which once held the top spot in India — shipped 9.3 million handsets in the nation during the same period, settling for a 25.3% market share.
Stop imposing your world view on others. Android made smartphones accessible to many people across the globe. You won't mention that would you ? Won't fit your narrative.