Explain to me this business mystery

[RCBH928]

Hello,

I have been thinking lately of purchasing an iphone 4, but its high price of $800 without a plan is confusing me. So i stopped for a min.

How is it possible that the iphone 4 cost as much as $800 ,
and the ipad is for $500
with same memory (16gb) , but
Longer battery life, larger screen, and better over all performance?
its basically a huge iphone, minus the cell phone capabilities , last time I checked you can find new cell phones for $30 , so I am sure calling is not that expensive to include.

Now the ipod touch that is almost exactly like the iphone, with no calling abilities , is only $300 or so, but because the iphone can make calls and gps, its costs $800!

now compare the Ipod touch $300 to a ps3 $300

with the ipod touch I get a small screen and 32 GB
with the ps3 I get
DVD blu-ray player, full 1080p (As far as I know), controller, 120 GB hard drive , and a much more powerful cpu , AND FREE ONLINE GAMEPLAY!!

so , how come the product with more features costs fraction of what simpler product costs.

Please,
No one tell me that Apple is an expensive brand, blackberry and andriods all costs around the same price or so.

And no one tell me that Sony loses money to make up on games, because Apple can do the same, they will lose money on hardware and sell you apps, music, and movies. If you can pirate that, you can also pirate games.

[CRTGAMER]

Too many iFans and berry pickers drive the market up.

[Hobie-wan]

Making electronics smaller is harder so it costs more. If you have 2 electronic devices that do more or less the same thing, the smaller one will cost more. A 16 gigabyte flash drive the size of your thumbnail will cost more than one the size of your thumb. Take a laptop and a desktop PC + screen of the same approximate specifications. The laptop will cost a lot more.

[yomomma1]

Apple is an expensive brand.

[Droid party]

They charge it because they can. You may not like it, but the next 50 will pay anything to have the latest Apple accessory regardless of price.

[Pulsar_t]

The actual cost of something like an iPad is around $260. Developing countries like India can make something like it for $100 but without most of the 'glamour' surrounding an Apple product.

[gravitone]

Apple's business model is hardly a mystery. You are wondering why the sale price diverges so much from the actual production cost. A large chunk of that price is obviously profit. Apple is the sole producer of the iphone. And even thought its just a phone, in a market filled with other phones, it is not a homogenous good like say frozen beans, or a carton of milk. You might argue though that the iphone is pretty close to being homogenous since basically all its functions are replicated by other devices, just not with the exact same software and hardware. Apple will do everything in its power to make it seem different, and obscure that simple truth from your mind. Apple has to cover its cost, and it has a lot of that. Not only does it develop the iphone, (they do about 0% of the actuall production and distribution) they also spend an enormous amount of money on marketing. This structure includes everything from simple advertisement, sponsorship, promotions, macstore personel, to complicated psychological mindtrics applied in clever ways to mindfuck the naive unsuspecting customer. Their sole aim is to make you want to think that you NEED an iphone. And given your reaction, Im sure they have succeeded. No doubt you already posess an phone 3g, 3gs, or both. As well as a whole load of other apple products. Just like in the days of old where the church used the same mindfucking to draw people in with awe and amazement at the sight of the interior and exterior of grand cathedrals, its art, its gold, its music through massive church organs, all for the sole purpose of robbing you of your individual desires, thoughts, and wealth. So has apple captured you with flashy add's, pictures, and meaningless slogans.

If you truly believe the apple product satisfies your needs more then other products to such an extent that it justifies the high price then so be it. But instead of asking why apple's prices are high you should be asking yourself, why do I keep buying apple even though their prices are so out of proportion?

[slowslow325]

The "i" in "iPhone" jacks it up.

[RCBH928]

Actually i never had an iphone,
infact, other than 1 operating system I bought(tiger)
I only bought an apple imac in 2002 and lasted all the way to 2009, where i bought a macbook.
so no, apple did not mind fuck me.

Also Apple is not an expensive brand, please look at the prices of htc-android phones:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss? ... _81&fsc=-1

blackberry torch is more expensive than 2 ps3's:
http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid ... Categories

samsung galaxy S, still more expensive than a ps3:
http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=samsun ... m270.l1313

so thats 3 more companies that sell cell phones with the same price range .


As for smaller things cost more, thats right
if you can make a ps3 that fits in my palm, it will be more expensive than a ps3 slim

but an iphone , or a droid, or an ipad...is NOT a ps3 in my hands. Its like maybe 10% of a ps3

[Niode]

Mobile phones are expensive. It's not just the iPhone. The iPhone 4 is expensive. It's the most expensive iPhone yet. Yes it does what a lot of other phones do however, It also does what a lot of other phones don't such as a ridiculously easy to use operating system, high quality 3D games (the android doesn't even support 3D gaming yet), a very comprehensive app store (android doesn't even compare) and the highest resolution screen of any mobile communications device so far (960x640 compared to the next nearest competitor, the Samsung Galaxy S at 480x800). For the ease of use and app store alone is worth the extra money. I am 100% satisfied with my iPhone 4, I don't feel ripped off at all.

I currently work for O2 customer service (unfortunately) and I get calls every day from people unsatisfied with their phones. The vast majority of them are HTC/RIM/Samsung owners, I get several calls a day regarding people with Blackberries they just don't understand how to use. I NEVER get customers calling me regarding problems with using their iPhone. It just doesn't happen. Every now and then I'll get a customer not able to use the internet on their device, but the reason is they're on a non-iPhone tariff and need to change their APN settings which is a 30 second fix to change it from idata.o2.co.uk to mobile.o2.co.uk. That's it. Surely that's worth the extra money knowing your phone isn't going to shit itself 4 months down the line and you have to do a factory reset for no apparent reason and then go through Host Routing Table Register and Email service books (which takes a good 25 minutes over the phone). I get a call from a customer with a Blackberry with that exact issue at least 5 times a day. So does everybody else I know who works there. Why bother with the hassle?