The answer depends on the country or even the city you live in or visit. In some places walking around with a $1000 phone is extremely dangerous to your life.
That seems surprising to me, when surely there's no easy way to steal a phone (iPhone or Android) and not have it completely locked and unusable. I would imagine that cars are eminently more desirable a target to steal as they're often left unattended for hours/days at the side of the road and they're typically worth far more than $1k. It's also relatively easy to attack a car waiting at traffic lights, over-power the driver and have access to the car and the keys, if the actual vehicle is required rather than just selling the parts.
Pickpocketing is quick and easy, sometimes not even a crime, and even though phones are locked, you can sell the Android phone for pieces. That's not the case for the iphone.
In many places, it's a crime according to the law, but if nothing happens with thieves or reported theft, then in terms of consequences it's not a crime.
I think you're using a different defintion of "crime" than I am (unlawful activity is probably the simplest). "Unenforced" would be probably a better term. e.g. Speeding in a car is a crime in a lot of places, but is often unenforced.
You can definitely re-use or sell iPhone parts. Most of replacement parts shops have access to are not sold directly by Apple.
As mentioned in the article, some parts won't work and others will show warnings. And sometimes you can reprogram chips with small devices easily available from China, which essentially defeats Apple's hardware pairing.