anon(4698833)
Banned
What's up NFLPlayBook, imagine seeing you here.....SMILE. I agree with you and I also feel that pricing has been inflated, but not only by the carriers , but also by the manufacturers. It's been a know fact that it's cheaper to make more of......anything, however that has not taken place in the current smartphone market.....it used to be that way "back in the day" and you would think with sooooooo many more smartphones in demand compared to a few years ago that prices would be less than what they are.....IMO anyway
In a world where profits are not the most important thing to a business, you'd be absolutely right. Here's the thing thought, people buy these smart devices in DROVES...they aren't just selling well, they are downright flying off the shelves, to a point where one could begin to argue that the pricing might actually be too LOW (and it is when you consider subsidized pricing, even with a 2 year contract signing, the pricing is lower than the actual production cost of the phone itself...and this is why carriers charge so much for FEATURES).
To be fully honest, pricing of these smart phones is actually a better deal (unsubsidized) than it was "back in the day" as you called it. What you get now for $600 is a substantially better product than what you got say 8 years ago, or even 5 years ago. These phones are so much more capable than they used to be...hell, I remember getting a Motorola PAGER back in the 90's and spending $350 for the thing, and it wouldn't even do alpha-numeric messages on the screen...it was strictly a numbers deal...for $350. If they had something with even half the features back then for $600, people would have gone ape sh*t over it.
Saying that a successful product should have a price lowering based on it's success is ridiculous. Businesses aren't in this game to make things easier for you to obtain, they are in it for ONE reason...money. Right now, Apple (and the other manufacturers of top tier devices) found the sweet spot between over priced/unsuccessful and underpriced/brand degrading. They've literally found a perfect target that makes retail pricing still attractive and subsidized pricing almost untouchable.