They can’t be manufactured here anyway. We dont have the infrastructure.
There will be the concept of a plan in two weeks, infrastructure week!
Buy infrastructure, crank out phones. DONE
Hello, I would like to buy one infrastructure please.
Wait… Are you saying our modern life of convenience and technological advancement is built on the backs of exploited foreign workers and that building those things here wouldn’t be possible without an exploited slave class? I’m shocked, I say, shocked.
If you can pay people with beatings instead of money, you get temu.
Do it. Apple buyers have always been more than willing to shill out extra money for status.
I swear there are some apple users out there that would be proud to pay way more. Because people need to know they can afford crap
Anyone here remember those $10,000 gold apple watches ?
That, IIRC, is not supported in the recent watch OS versions.
No, what were those?
I do remember someone creating three apps with different prices, most expensive being on that range. This was when the App Store was new.
When the first apple watch came out they also had models made from gold instead of steel, with luxury case etc. Don’t know why they thought it was a good plan, but it’s roll-out was way to elaborate for it be merely a marketing tric. Found you a link for more info: https://www.ablogtowatch.com/apple-watch-edition/
The figure I’ve seen was $20,000. The US could do it (they’ve built spacecraft and military hardware domestically without access to Chinese supply chains), though not at the level of efficiency to sell them close to current prices.
Then again, the great offshoring of manufacturing has been one of the factors keeping inflation down, or rather allowing the slice of the cost of living taken up by real estate to keep rising (to the satisfaction of investors) without pushing the population into misery. Before Chinese manufacturing at vast scales, electronic devices cost a lot more in real terms (look at ads in 1980s computer magazines for examples; in the early 80s, you might well have spent $600 on an 8-bit computer that plugs into a television and saves data on cassette)
It’s almost as if smartphones are not affordable once you actually pay all the people involved in making them a decent-ish wage. Who would’ve thought…
How much could a banana cost? Ten dollars?
Just move banana production to US. How much would it take? 2-3 months.
Or apple could stop making such a obscene profit. I know, I know.
Removed by mod
People love their iPhone vs Android arguments. I admit I used to revel in it back when smartphones were new and every update was massive. I’ll even admit I’m still riding the high of winning one of these arguments in a bar in 2010 by using my Moto Droid’s camera flash as a flashlight.
But there’s only so many ways to joke about Apple’s feature lag. There’s only so many ways to correct or explain things like green text bubbles, worse picture quality in some apps, or that the cheapest android is not going to be able to compare to the Apple flagship, yadda yadda yadda.
Now when someone tries to drag me into one of these conversations my whole mind just glazes over. I have a pocket computer I can do near anything with, and you have a fashion accessory. We are not the same. If you like the fashion accessory then that’s fine with me, but if you have to put down my choices in order to justify your own then you’re going to have a bad time. I had to maintain a work iPhone and help others with theirs for many years so I am very, extremely, intimately familiar with its limitations, just as you are about to be.
Realistically their fashion accessory is also as pocket computer that can do anything (that they want it to do).
A lot of the main android selling points these days are more niche use cases.
Eh. I take your point, but disagree. Working in IT I have the privilege of hearing how frustrated iPhone users constantly are with their devices. But it’s a frustration they’re used to and to replace it with a more functional device would cost them status so it’s a nonstarter.
Just last weekend I was helping a friend set up a pi-hole and he got stuck changing the DNS server IP in his router. The router only had an app and it wasn’t working on his iPhone. I was able to download the app, login to his account, and change the DNS setting while he was still trying to get the app to start. This after an hour of him teasing about my Android. I’m not saying this has never happened on a non-apple device but when you have that much more control over your device and applications it makes it possible to actually troubleshoot and work around those kinds of issues. The iPhone is just a phone and social media machine. I’m carrying around the most powerful tool on my toolbelt.
And I don’t mean to disparage people who like iPhones, everyone is entitled to what they like and it takes all sorts. I am just saying I think the argument is silly at this point.
Yeah but what percentage of those end users would be capable of debugging their device even if it was an option?
For me, the main reason I tend to get the top end iPhone is that I enjoy photography, and it is honestly a FANTASTIC camera. I have some DSLRs too, and some nice glass for them, but for EDC, a smartphone with an excellent camera is rather tough to beat, in terms of convenience and capability - I always keep it on me, so if I want to shoot something I randomly come across, I simply pull it out and fiddle with the framing and zoom and exposure and so on until I have what I want. In the context of my phone purchase cycle (once every 4 years), I can justify $1200 for a new device with excellent photography capabilities that is also a handheld computer and communications device. But I simultaneously understand that different people have very different use cases.
That said, I also just snagged an old refurb pixel 5 as a secondary/burner device for like 150ish. Useful for traveling and protests, tbh.
Funny, that’s why I get the latest Pixels, for the camera. It’s a great backup to my Z6II.To each their own! I’ve been saying for years though as soon as someone releases a phone with a real sensor and lens I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Idk what you like to shoot, but if it’s wildlife then may I cordially invite you to post to /c/wildlifephotography?
Removed by mod
The most expensive iPhone retails for $1200, with a manufacturing price of ~$500 and net profit of ~$700.
So if an iPhone costs $3500 to make domestically, then Apple would need to sell it for $4200 to make the same profit. But even if Trump levies his 100% tariff on China, it would still be significantly cheaper for Apple to make iPhones in China and pay 2x the manufacturing costs ($1000), add the same $700 profit, and just charge $1700 for the same model.
So in the end no new domestic manufacturing jobs are made, Apple, an American company, loses business because less people would buy at a higher price, and American consumers get shafted.
I think your estimate is flawed. The article does state $3500, but that’s consumer cost. The profit margin would already be baked into that. Barring a democracy-ending chain of events in the US, Apple wouldn’t even have time to move manufacturing to the US in a meaningful enough way to get to this price point before the end of 47’s term. $2000 iPhones with baked in consumer taxes (tariffs)? Absolutely, though.
More likely the cost is only $1500 and the price to the consumer would be 3500, because Apple would absolutely fuck the consumer like every other corporation. At best this might be an absolute profit projection and that cost is 2800 at the 3500 price point
The secret ingredient is slavery.
I just can’t seem to summon a single fuck about this.
Probably last a third of the time too.
IPhones are overrated. Mobile phones are a huge import from China as far as I know, and China is far to authoritarian for me to care.
