There are 4 messages about being able to buy this on credit/monthly payments.
Veblen goods don't target the wealthy, but they need to appear to.
I feel like this has mixed messaging, or maybe this is a necessity to make the sale.
The more straightforward explanation is that Apple just wants to make it easy to buy on credit.
I disagree that Apple products are Veblen goods in the same way that, say, Prada products are.
Both of you are arguing on which side of an ideal abstraction (Veblen goods) Apple is. Seems silly to me.
Apple products ARE status symbols in many countries, that's what most of the Chinese market is for Apple presently.
They're also playing as utilitarian tech products with mass appeal. Apple has always had this hybrid strategy, it's not one OR the other.
A quick look at their profit margins vs. the competition will show that they're marking up their products significantly above the competition. And I mean in profit margin specifically, so that we don't have this argument about whether they have more expensive software and hardware in principle (they do, but most of it is profit margin).
And also sorry but this is a $15 battery sold for $99, even as an Apple user they're losing me here. Some of their accessories are literally for people who want to spend money on Apple shit.
Yet the prices almost double.
The wikipedia page for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good is interesting. It talks about wastefulness, but then excludes "ethical goods" from consideration as being wasteful. Apparently we are never allowed to ask whether a cottage farm in Portland is wasteful compared to an efficient mechanized farm. Only intent matters.
Whether you buy into the marketing or not, the pitch is this: the latest iPhone is the best phone in the world, and if you can make the monthly payment, you can have it. It's like Warhol's observation about Coke: you can't pay more for a better iPhone, even if you're a prince or a celebrity.
You can pay extra for exactly two things: storage, which is invisible, or a red one.
Apple does make a few products which appear to exist to anchor the "luxury" part of this branding, such as a $999 monitor stand, or the AirPods Max, Hermes-branded Apple Watches and so on.
But their bread and butter is affordable luxury.
I'm guessing it's also a US-specific thing. The MagSafe battery pack listings for non-US stores don't have this:
UK: https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MJWY3ZM/A/magsafe-batt...
Singapore: https://www.apple.com/sg/shop/product/MJWY3ZA/A/magsafe-batt...
iPhones are not simply Veblen goods like Hermes handbags (although there might be that element to them), they are also in many ways the best smartphone you can buy, for lots of different reasons. I buy all of my clothes at Costco and I have an iPhone. It is a mainstream product targeting mainstream Americans, many of whom consume on credit.
For the ultra wealthy, their lives are completely dependent on loans and debt.
He's always packing the latest iPhone Pro.
If iPhones are a status symbol, I'm not sure to whom.
So iPhones are a status symbol for people like your friend, who are making more money than the average citizen, if that clears it up for you.
2. The iPhone 12 mini is $699
3. Half of the US is not “rich”. But somehow they manage to have iPhones.
To me that still seems like a lot of money.