by 1970-01-01 15 hours ago
$599 still feels like they're setting whatever price they can get away with. It's been 20 years, why don't we have sub $500 new iPhones yet?
Taking inflation into account, a $599 iPhone in 2026 would have been $380 in 2007. Given that the actual launch price in 2007 was $499, that's a pretty hefty drop.
A technology doodad getting 25% cheaper in real terms over 15-20 years is about as far opposite as you can get from a hefty price drop.
Sure, it hasn’t crashed like the prices of televisions, or like computers did in the 80s and 90s. But it’s still meaningfully cheaper and of course much more capable (the original iPhone didn’t even launch with an App Store!).
Come on, the iPhone had:
- no app store
- no video recording at all
- no copy/paste function
- no selfie camera
- no GPS
And then in terms of the specs on what it did have that got better, processor, memory, storage, screen quality, battery life, camera, it's all orders of magnitude better. There really is no comparison.
I mean look at the price of a digital camera, music player etc, hell even external battery pack in 2007, with the same specs as the iPhone today, and you'll easily find support for using the words 'hefty price drop'.
It took about three years to get all the features in your bulleted list. It's been another fifteen and a half years since.
Touch/faceID is cheap, wireless charging is cheap, the free tier of iCloud is cheap, water resistance is cheap.
Yes the specs have increased a ton. When asking for a model under $500, the idea would be giving up some of those specs. And that's clearly possible; even low end phones these days are a zillion times better than an original iPhone.
And no I will not look at non-iPhone things when I'm evaluating whether iPhones underwent a hefty price drop. The cheapest iPhone these days is slightly cheaper than a first or second generation iPhone, and the best one is a lot more expensive.
It's also 10000% more capable too.
Sure, but new computers are 100,000x more capable and 1/10th the cost. If we look back far enough, it's 1/100th the cost. We could do better.
And OP wants a model that's somewhat less than a 10000% improvement.
$499 with carrier subsidy too
It didn't take much longer to get a 3G for that price with no subsidy.
> feels like they're setting whatever price they can get away with.
This is just a free market for any product works. No?
Why do software engineers ask for six digit salaries? Because they can get away with it — someone is willing to pay for it.
>Why do software engineers ask for six digit salaries? Because they can get away with it
No you see it's their RIGHT to demand an exorbitant salary – because that's 'what they're worth' and what the market will bear
Unfortunately they're less charitable when the shoe is on the other foot.
I’m pretty sure they determine the price upfront and then figure out what bells and whistles they can ship without eating into their margins. Their goal is to hit a certain average selling price across their massive user base when they upgrade their old phones. They are not going to jeopardize that by releasing an attractive cheap iPhone.
For the people who really don’t want to spend a lot, obviously the easiest option is to just buy an older iPhone or keep your phone for longer. My partner doesn’t care about having the latest tech. So first I use a phone for 3 years and then they use it for another 3 years. We essentially get 6 years of life out of it (Apple is good about releasing software updates for 6 years).
At least they increased the base storage to 256GB
It's a luxury brand. You don't sell cheap and risk losing the people that are happy to pay $1400 for a new iPhone.
It’s not a luxury brand, it is a quality brand. There is a difference.
So is Mercedes-Benz. But they don't sell a $20,000 commuter car.
No, Mercedes Benz is definitely a luxury brand. They don’t want to sell to everyone. Apple (Steve Jobs) has explicitly stated that as one of their goals.
It’s not a quality brand, it is a luxury brand. There is a difference.
Oh but they do: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Automobile
>aimed at producing Smart-badged cars
The brand is "Smart".
Toyota is a quality brand, Mercedes is a luxury brand.
Mercedes-Benz sells commuter cars in Europe.
> The Mercedes-Benz A-Class is a car manufactured by German luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz
"luxury" is more of a marketing and product positioning term, it doesn't really have anything to do with engineering or quality practicalities
And this is the Mercedes-Benz commuter car I want to see more of.
The keyboard-doesn't-trigger-the-tapped-key-sometimes brand, just awestruck at their quality https://ios-countdown.win/
> It’s not a luxury brand, it is a quality brand. There is a difference.
It’s an attainable luxury brand. There aren’t many products that a high school kid has in common with billionaires, superstar athletes and movie stars—the iPhone is such a product.
The iPhone SE was only $400.
I'd argue that is worth the money if you're going to be using a phone every single day of their life. People will drop a few hundred on fancy shoes and wear them once a month, but they treat phones as cheap commodities.
Last time I complained about the pricing of the iPhone, people pointed out that inflation included the prices wasn't to far of from the original iPhone.
Still, I don't care that the phones are faster, have larger screens, better camera, FaceID, AI, are thinner light and what have you. The iPhone design peaked in 2015, from there they could just have release the same phone year after year, making it cheaper and cheaper and I'd still be happy with it.
The prices are, in my mind insane, and I'll be buying used, but those are also overpriced.
> Still, I don't care that the phones are faster, have larger screens, better camera, FaceID, AI, are thinner light and what have you. The iPhone design peaked in 2015, from there they could just have release the same phone year after year, making it cheaper and cheaper and I'd still be happy with it.
This obviously isnt relevant generally though, this is not how the general public feels at all.
No, they couldn’t, because then the company would stop existing due to lack of sales.
Bell System released about 10 models over 110 years, worked out just fine for them.
Yeah, because it had a government-sanctioned monopoly.
And now you see why they want to grow their services business so badly
There is no market for it in US at least since carriers control that selling couple year old iphones for free or close to it.
$900 is the new $600 </trump>
You asked for it. Now sit back and relish the ripe comments from fruitopologists.
The first SE in 2016, which wasn’t very far from flagship at the time, was only $399. It was a steal.
Accounting for inflation, that's $542. And considering how much everything, including phones, costs nowadays, $600 seems like a steal to me too. I was expecting a much higher price for what I'm seeing on that page.
What can sub $500 amount get you nowadays? Just a fancy dinner, or a couple of regular ones.
Can mess up the price ladder!
Because they know people will pay it.
Global crazy tariffs, supply chain issues, and RAM and storage shortages due to AI hype betting. Also greed.