You dont seem to understand why people buy the most expensive phones. Most of the time (especially outside tech circles) its a show of wealth.
In a lot of ways the iphone has always been the Achilles Heel of the ultra wealthy, no matter how many billions you had, you could never do fancier than a 1500 buck iphone. Apple IMO is just trying to capitalize on this phenomenon and capture the pretentious luxury market. Anecdotally the galaxy fold did really well with the obnoxiously rich circles in my country, people who previously all had iphones. So they kinda have to do it as well now.
> you could never do fancier than a 1500 buck iphone
There's always high-end commercial modders like Caviar [0], who help customers flex both their wealth and their extremely bad taste...
[0] https://caviar.global/catalog/custom-iphone/
So basically "icing a rolex"? Theres premium and then theres tacky.
Those have always existed but they are usually just tacky.
They already offer a custom duo…
> Apple IMO is just trying to capitalize on this phenomenon and capture the pretentious luxury market.
Yes, that aligns with Apple offering their ridiculous golden watch faces and bands of $1000s for their Watch - it's all just about projecting wealth and 'success' (i.e. in these days of capitalism: mostly exploiting others and/or making them depended).
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Asia and America are very different
People who want to flaunt wealth they don't have will do so regardless of the continent they're from.
This statement isn't even factually correct. If you look at some place like Hong Kong and LA, you'll find a lot of similarities in demographics.
They are very different and it’s insane that you think otherwise
They're the same in this regard, and it’s insane that you think otherwise.
Asians might get the fame today with movies like "Crazy Rich Asians" but Americans have long been seen as the typical "flaunting wealth" conspicuous comsuptiom people by Europeans for example. In 2026 even the President has golden toilets and golden everything to flaunt his wealth.
Apple has a fairly good market in Asia, too. It's just that competition is quite high in Asia compared to America.