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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

For average people, iPhones are aspirational, android is what you get if you can’t afford an iPhone. So as soon as you can afford it, you buy one.

Tech people excluded because they have other niche reasons for their smartphone choice.

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Anyone can buy an iPhone for the same price or less than most Android phones. $399/429.

And you can sell an iPhone a year or two later for more than the Android phone, making it less expensive overall.

Assuming you didn't crack your screen meanwhile.

I am on my fifth iPhone. I sold the first three for respectable amounts of cash, and traded in the fourth for the fifth. For the third and fourth, I ended up making a profit versus the cost of the iPhone that replaced them!

That's the price of a decent midrange Android phone. I'm pretty sure most Android phones are less than $400.

The most popular Android phones are the Samsung Galaxy S series. Two generations back (S20) are still selling new from carriers for $600+.

I like to say that Apple is a marketing company with a very good product development team. Apple makes luxury goods with huge cachet. Android covers the entire spectrum of cheap crap up to the same level of luxury but that dilutes the brand. Apple is also vertically integrated, doing everything themselves and licensing nothing.

Not sure about this one. You can get both kinds of phones for $0 with a monthly payment.

The monthly price is exactly the same price as paying upfront - doesn't make any difference to affordability.

This seems incredibly blind to the realities of poor people.

$30/month (for a maxed out phone; you could be looking at $12/mo) is much more palatable to a lot of people than paying the full sticker price today.

I've seen it the other way. When spending $1000 dollars on a phone is no big deal, you get the best phone available regardless of brand.

When you can't afford it, you finance it. A iphone is $30/month. It's a status symbol for the lower class. It doesn't do much for status when you make 6 figures.

Exactly. If you keep the phone two or three years, a handset costs a buck or two per day and that's something just about everybody can afford if it's something they want.

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