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...
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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Or apple could stop making such a obscene profit. I know, I know.
They can't be manufactured here anyway. We dont have the infrastructure.
Buy infrastructure, crank out phones. DONE
Hello, I would like to buy one infrastructure please.
There will be the concept of a plan in two weeks, infrastructure week!
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)
How much could a banana cost? Ten dollars?
Just move banana production to US. How much would it take? 2-3 months.
The secret ingredient is slavery.
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
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.