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Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

There is also rapidly declining value from smartphone as a status symbol and part of identity. People are willing to pay extra for real or imagined increase of status. It has been few years since someone asked what phone I have. Sometimes someone asks "Apple or Android?" for practical reasons.

People check out new smarphones when they are considering buying a new one. They (mostly men) are not so interested checking out new phones all the time as they used to be.

Only thing can think of that could change the trend is AR/VR (Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality) really starting to deliver.

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What makes you think people buy phones as a status symbol? I usually hear this from people who don’t buy Apple products misunderstanding the motivation of those who do.

It used to be a real thing until a few years ago. Now, it's debatable.

Decades of research for marketing, branding and consumer behaviour seems to indicate that signaling to others is large motivation in buying decisions. Links between status signaling behavior based on expertise, need for status, and brand prominence seem to be significant.

People are not always consciously aware of their motivations. Something just makes them feel right and they rationalize other reasons to justify it for themselves.

Interesting recent research: Coming apart? Cultural distances in the United States over time https://www.nber.org/papers/w24771

>The brand most predictive of top income in 1992 is Grey Poupon Dijon mustard. 42 By 2004, the brand most indicative of the rich is Land O’Lakes butter, followed by Kikkoman soy sauce. By the end of the sample, ownership of Apple products (iPhone and iPad) tops the list. Knowing whether someone owns an iPad in 2016 allows us to guess correctly whether the person is in the top or bottom income quartile 69 percent of the time. Across all years in our data, no individual brand is as predictive of being high-income as owning an Apple iPhone in 2016.

If you can afford it, a Mercedes is a nicer car than a Toyota. An iPhone is better than most android phones and has a whole Apple ecosystem around it which many find is worth the premium. One might not be “signaling” as much as simply being able to afford a superior product.

That doesn't at all suggest that their phone or computer is the way they do that, or that this is what people who buy Apple products are doing.

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