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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

One thing Samsung does to reel you in is to make ridiculous offers to existing customers. I'm not sure if Apple does the same or not.

For example, they'll often list a phone for say $1000. Then offer you $800 trade in on last years model, and maybe $500 on a two year old model, both objectively much more than the phone is worth. Pair that with EPP discounts that almost everyone qualifies for, RetailMeNot sitewide codes, credit card rewards, and random Samsung offers - you can often upgrade every year if you want for very little money.

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Samsung also has much better lower end. The iPhone SE starts at 430$, compared to 200$ for a Samsung A14.

Often Samsung phones are even cheaper with a prepaid.

For 90% of people that A14 is going to give you the same utility. However Apple probably has a much better margin here.

They get to own the whole stack, if I buy an an Android phone I'm getting my apps from Google, my cloud storage from Google.

If I buy an iPhone I'm buying apps from Apple, paying for iCloud and Apple TV.

That A14 is surprising. It has a huge screen, decent battery, dual-sim, headphone jack, and can take a 1TB MicroSD. The one I saw didn't even have much bloat installed on it.

I actually was using a cheap Samsung phone( with a jack ) for a good while, but it lacked Esim.

I suspect at the lower end most people aren't buying 100$ earbuds so they might as well leave the jack.

And on the other end can have hi-res DACs not limited by crapily-negotiated codecs.

And for $250 you can get the A34 which has an amoled 120Hz screen (the A14 is LCD)

That's only in the US, they do that because they're not market leader there. Apple is still #1 in the US.

Here in Europe the deals are much milder unfortunately.

> both objectively much more than the phone is worth

I'd say $1000 is subjectively more than it should be worth, objectivity would be indicated by what the same phone could be acquired for by some other means; $800 for last year's model seems fair if it was initially priced at $1000. Whatever Apple is going to give you for your 1 year old Macbook or phone is just a laughably low amount aimed at the lazy rich and other stupid consoomers who deserve a bad deal if they'll go for it anyway.

Does there exist a market where you can convert the phone into $800 or $500? If so it is objectively worth that much. Otherwise it isn't. "Seems fair" has nothing to do with it!

Isn't that approximately what I said? As in, either brand new in box at the retailer or in the used market, the price will be set by whether potential buyers find it to seem fair or not.

Either the company is making money or I'm keeping the money. For some reason people like it when the company makes money. I like it when I get to keep them.

> both objectively much more than the phone is worth

Very attractive to someone like me who wrings the last vestiges of life from their phone, I was very surprised to get half off of the S22 when I traded in my ancient S7.

But then they take you over the data harvesting coals

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