[andrewmcwatters]

This is an interesting development, but not exclusive to the Chinese market. They've priced themselves out of many working Americans who refuse to put payments on a phone.

Many companies, not just Apple, are raising their ASPs, or cutting categories to pursue more affluent customers while tacking on corporate debt to buyback shares in efforts to prop up share prices.

I believe what we're seeing isn't an Apple-ism, this is market behavior. And the market is dictating that Tim Cook and others make these decisions from the top down.

Almost all auto manufacturers in America are dropping a few cars in their lineup in favor of more expensive SUVs, which people are willing to purchase. And there are many other instances of this behavior going on. Don't pay mind to Apple doing this. Instead, focus your time reading on why companies in the CRSPTM1 are all doing similar things regarding consumer purchases.

With the T10Y2Y approaching zero, and eventually negative percentages, I believe we're sitting on a ticking time-bomb that goes off sometime between 2020-2022, but I'm not educated enough to know if this is highly probable or not.

[cm2187]

And that’s in period of high economic growth. Wait until there is a recession (which I read a lot of people expect to start this year) to see how their volumes will react.

[snazz]

What this might be telling us is that there is, in fact, a cap for the amount of money someone will spend on a phone. I thought $650 was a lot, but then it started looking reasonable as soon as we got to $1000 phones. I have been continually surprised for the last few years that people are not only willing to spend more money but Apple’s unit sales have increased as well.

[hinkley]

$650 to $1000 is a big jump, but it's important to factor inflation into any financial logic unless you want bad conclusions.

Random inflation calculator is telling me that 2019 prices should be 6% more than 2015 prices. So right there you're talking about $690 for the same phone this year. The 55% apparent increase in phone price over that period is more like 50%. Which is still huge, but not quite as huge.

[izacus]

Consumers don't think like that though - noone goes and calculates a percentage inflation from the previous product. What they see is the previous price tag and the new price tag... and the amount of money on their bank account.

[andrewmcwatters]

You're focused on the micro. Yes, Apple is doing this, but why are other American publicly-traded companies also raising their ASPs uniformly? What companies are not doing this who also utilize foreign manufacturing deals? And of those companies, are they purchasing shares back?

These things will answer whether or not Apple in the future will go back to selling phones within the ~$600 dollar range.