[longerthoughts]

Is it possible that they deliberately priced themselves in excess of the competition in an attempt to cultivate a more exclusive, high-end image? With so much competition in the Chinese market it has to be hard to distinguish themselves otherwise.

[manicdee]

Roughly speaking, from the beancounter perspective, selling one phone for $50 profit is better than selling two phones for $30 profit each, because you only need ongoing support for one customer.

[bobby177]

That doesn’t hold up when you need someone to own your phone to sell them apps, a watch, AirPods, etc.

[manicdee]

The person who spends money has money, so I expect the correlation between cheap phone and low store spending is fairly high. No idea about the whales though.