When the iPhone X was launched last year, many people were skeptical about the high priced tag and whether or not the phone would achieve the number of sales that Apple was expecting. With a base price of $999, the iPhone X set the record for being the most expensive iPhone X to date, however, this did not matter much for the customers, as the phones sold like hot cakes.
Innovation was what Apple had promised with the iPhone X, and it seems that the customers surely take the company’s word for it. It certainly seemed for the customers that the iPhone X was surely worth a thousand dollars, as the phone has not only been the most expensive iPhone to date, but also has been the most popular iPhone to date, proven by the fact that it has been Apple’s best seller each week since it went on sale on the 3rd of November last year.
Now that Apple has experienced such brilliant sale numbers, why wouldn’t it want to continue the thousand dollar trend for the iPhones? Why shouldn’t the company charge such a huge sum of money for the next iPhone as well, adopting the same business model as last year? As far as the rumors go, it is expected that at least one of the three rumored iPhones will share the same price tag as the iPhone X.
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This pricey trend has followed on with other companies as well. The competition has clearly taken on its toll, as Samsung’s newly released note 9 is also priced at $999, which is a $50 increase to the Note 8, which was released just last year. Even if this was not in the business plans of Samsung, with its fiercest rival adopting such a business model, there was no way that the Korean giant was going to let this one go.
The trend of such pricey smartphones has also carried over to Oneplus. They are supposed to be providing cheap and affordable smartphones, having the same features as the more expensive flagships, and even though the price of the Oneplus’ latest flagship isn’t as much as the other flagships, it is still a significant rise to the first Oneplus flagship phone, which was released not so many years ago.
Other than the obvious rivalry which is there between Samsung and Apple, amongst other companies, it seems that while the thousand or more dollar trend for smartphones was introduced not so long ago, it is surely here to stay. But why does this seem likely? Why is this the case? Well, according to one analyst, companies like Apple and Samsung are seeking higher profit margins per unit to compensate over the fact that users are not buying newer phones every year, as was the case just a few years ago. So while placing a price tag of a thousand dollars on a smartphone seemed like a skeptical move at first, it is surely a business model that is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
