The iPhone especially in America is a unique case.
Sure the average selling price of an iPhone is $500 more than an Android. But all of the major and even minor carriers either subsidize the phone or have no interest payment plans between 24-36 months. The price difference is negligible over 3 years.
No other product is like that. Even today in the US, the Mac only has around 15% market share.
While I agree with your larger point, I just wanted to point out some inaccuracies
> Sure the average selling price of an iPhone is $500 more than an Android
FWIW this is only true if you’re not comparing within market segments.
If you stick to the same market segment, then they’re about on par with equivalent Android phones for price. They just don’t have anything in the real budget categories.
> The iPhone especially in America is a unique case
The iPhone market share is relative to the premium phone market share of most locations. Which in turn is relative to the spending power of the populations.
iPhones dominate the premium market share compared to Android. I’m actually curious what the Mac market share is when framed to just “premium devices, and non-gaming”.
I suspect, but cannot backup, that Macs do relatively well if constrained to that market. But most people who have premium computers do so for gaming, and the ones who want budget don’t have a Mac to cater to them.
> They just don’t have anything in the real budget categories
Not sure what you define as budget categories, but apple sell the iphone se for $429 new on their site now. And you can get one through eg Tmobile for $250 or $50 + $10 a month for 24 months. Or the 64gb version for just that $10 a month. So I think they do compete in the budget category?
A lot of the world doesn’t have subsidized phones so I exclude carrier deals.
The SE is considered a mid range device imho in a lot of classifications. Budget is usually <300, mid range goes from 300-600 and premium is upwards from there. Of course with some deviation, but it’s how a lot of sales figures tend to split it up.
> The iPhone especially in America is a unique case.
iPhones have a >50% market share in Japan, Canada, and in a few European countries (Danmark, Sweden). The common point I see between all those is that they are high-income countries.
The phones also last a long time, being very durable and getting updates for a quite a while, so you can buy an older refurbished iPhone and save quite a bit of money.
I only just upgraded a year ago from an iPhone 7 I had owned for about 4 years and bought refurbished for under $300 (that still worked fine, I just wanted to start developing mobile apps again and needed something with the newest iOS) to a refurbished iPhone 12 for $250, and it feels plenty modern to me. It still has the latest iOS version on it as well.
Sure the average selling price of an iPhone is $500 more than an Android. But all of the major and even minor carriers either subsidize the phone or have no interest payment plans between 24-36 months. The price difference is negligible over 3 years.
No other product is like that. Even today in the US, the Mac only has around 15% market share.