I also just recently read an article as to why Apple is so expensive beyond it being a premium product. Back around 2015 they gambled that the price for Apple products was somewhat inelastic. That people were going to stick with Apple products even with a reasonable increase in price. So even though their manufacturing cost remained constant they just arbitrarily raised the prices across the board to increase profit margin and it worked. Sales did not go down and still increased.
And now that they hit the $1,000 barrier it's only going to get worse. This has not given an incentive for competitors to offer comparable products for less increasing market share but rather they are padding their profits as well. The cell phone has become such an integral part of people lives now that it's a necessity and part of a person's self-image that they will pay as much as they can to get the best phone they can.
In my case, the cost of the original Pixel Phone and moving up to the Pixel 2 remained the same. Now if I wanted to move up from the Pixel 2 to the Pixel 3 is now about $150 more with very little change. Everything is pretty much the same (you get an addition "2" ppi with the Pixel 3 -- lol). The Pixel 3 will get you the Snapdragon 845 instead of the 835 but nobody will notice the difference. Same camera, same software (Android 9), same RAM, same storage, same updates. You also get wireless charging with the Pixel 3 which is not an issue with me.
Not worth going from $650 to $800 for the base model. I'm sure that this time next year the Pixel 4 will hit $1,000 mark for the base model. Probably then is when I will defect over to the Chinese brands.
