[Dalewyn]

>25-30% of smartphone owners have an iPhone. Something like 1.3b active iPhone users. That seems decidedly non-luxury.

iPhones cost somewhere in the realm of $1000 to $2000 give or take. Meanwhile, actually cheap smartphones still from a reputable manufacturer (eg: Samsung) can be had for at least $200 to $300 or so.

So no, iPhones (and Apple products in general) are a luxury good. There is a lot more "want" than "need" involved when choosing to buy an iPhone.

[WWLink]

iPhones are not a luxury good by any means. You can waltz right into an Apple Store TODAY and buy yourself a $429 iPhone SE or a $599 iPhone 14. Boost mobile was giving iPhone 12s away for $99. Virtually every carrier has a free-with 2-3 year commitment deal for the iPhone 16.

I live in the US where iPhones were 61.26% of smartphones sold in the US in the most recent quarter https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/us-smartphone-market-share

If you want to be fancy, get a folding phone like a Galaxy Fold or a Pixel Fold. Those do have steep discounts at times, but you're still going to have to fork up $800-1200 or so for them. Or get one of those niche phones like an Xperia 1 or an Asus ROG phone or whatever that costs >$1000 and isn't subsidized by ANY carrier.

[Dalewyn]

When something like a Samsung Galaxy A15 can be had for $175[1] (and that's with no carrier commitments), any iPhone is a luxury good. Yes, even that $429 iPhone SE which is well over double the price of that Samsung.

Smartphones as a general good are a life necessity at this point, but esoteric offerings among them like iPhones or Sony Xperias or the higher end Samsung Galaxys or Google Pixels are luxury goods because nobody needs the features brought by the much bigger price tag.

It's like how a bottom trim Toyota Corolla or Honda Accord is a necessity because you probably need a car, but anything beyond it is a luxury because whether you want that car is different. Another example would be choosing name brand foodstuffs at the grocery store instead of the store brand, that's also choosing luxury goods assuming the store brand is cheaper.

[1]: https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-a15/buy/galaxy...

[AnonHP]

> because nobody needs the features brought by the much bigger price tag

That sounds like a very bold claim, yet it reflects nothing from the real world. You may not need something, but that doesn’t mean others don’t or must not.

Technically, nobody needs anything beyond food, water, shelter and companionship (even the last one is arguable). Allow everybody to only buy the cheapest of foods and the most basic shelters. Then declare that anything else is a want. That just doesn’t make sense.

Nobody needs social media or HN or to be commenting on HN either, but here we are.

[Dalewyn]

>Allow everybody to only buy the cheapest of foods and the most basic shelters. Then declare that anything else is a want.

But most of the things we obtain are wants rather than needs, aren't they?

iPhones are a luxury good; they are significantly more expensive than budget smartphones that can nonetheless practically serve the needs of most people if not their wants. Is that Samsung Galaxy A15 a great phone? Hell no it isn't, but you can do your mobile banking and make calls and texts and do instant messaging and emails just fine.

Not having a smartphone like even that Galaxy A15 will make life exceedingly prohibitive today, but not having an iPhone won't adversely affect your requisite daily affairs. iPhones are a luxury good.

Keep in mind, I'm not denigrating luxury goods thereof or the act of enjoying luxuries. There's inherently nothing wrong with buying an iPhone or a six-pack of beer or a sports car or a big house or a family vacation to a faraway country if that's what you want. We only get one life, so we might as well enjoy it.

[szvsw]

I think you’ve articulated it pretty clearly here, but I still have minor quibbles. Back to the original point… I might be misconstruing it, but reads a bit like this to me: something should be free of consumer protections if consumers have cheaper alternatives; they chose the more expensive option, and therefore they should suffer the consequences of that good or bad; and furthermore, we shouldn’t care if the company selling the product (allegedly) actively works to make it harder for them to transition to the cheaper alternatives in the future should they so desire.

Does that seem like a misconstruction of the part of the argument that we originally started this string of comments on? I think there are other slightly better arguments against it but this one seems pretty flawed to me.

It seems reasonable to me that when a product hits some critical, hard-to-define adoption threshold, even if it is a “luxury” choice by your definition, there is still a good argument for placing consumer protections in place. It’s also reasonable to believe those actions would be nanny-state failings, stifle innovation, drive business away etc etc, but I do think the first point of view is reasonable.

[Dalewyn]

I'm not passing judgment one way or another regarding consumer protections here, though I personally find EU more draconian than my preferences and whether they're effective is up for debate (GDPR is a hilarious failure, USB-C mandate is a resounding success).

Though, I think that when someone deliberately chooses to buy a luxury good (much less one that costs a 4 figure sum) they lose some of their standing to complain. Kind of like how I don't complain about my beer because someone will yell at me that I just shouldn't buy the beer if I don't like it and he would be absolutely right.

[matheusmoreira]

It's not a "luxury good". That's just what Apple's marketing department would have you believe.

It's a handheld computer. That's what it is. That's what it should be. And we should own our computers. And those computers should run whatever software we choose. And they should be able to network with every other computer on the planet. No bullshit restrictions.

[Dalewyn]

Libre Computing is an entirely different matter from whether iPhones are luxury goods.

[WWLink]

> I'm not passing judgment one way or another regarding consumer protections here, though I personally find EU more draconian than my preferences and whether they're effective is up for debate (GDPR is a hilarious failure, USB-C mandate is a resounding success).

The hell are you talking about GPDR being a resounding failure? It's been pretty awesome. I love bills like that.

[jandrewrogers]

My experience is that GDPR added a lot of compliance activity at companies but did not materially improve actual privacy. Companies pretty much do what they did before GDPR, just with a layer of bureaucratic indirection in between now. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intent but that's where we are, and in that sense it was a failure.

[kelnos]

It sounds like you've decided that "luxury good" means "anything that's more expensive than a competing product by an arbitrary dollar amount I've decided on".

That's not how the concept of luxury goods works.

Also consider that Android is not a 1:1 replacement for an iPhone in the same way that a Honda is a replacement for a Mercedes-Benz. Lock-in and ecosystem interop matters a lot more for a phone than for a car.

I would probably buy into the idea that a Pixel (for example) is a luxury Android device, but not that an iPhone is a luxury smartphone in general.

[Dalewyn]

Luxury good is anything that is not strictly necessary for a given purpose, in this case daily life. You will likely need a smartphone of some kind in this day and age to live, but you do not strictly need an iPhone. Hence, iPhones are a luxury good.

[szvsw]

I guess I disagree that price alone makes something a luxury good. Is a 10 year old Honda civic a luxury good (typically around $10-13k) even though there are probably cheaper and comparable alternatives? I would say no? Not a perfect analog because I do think there is merit in your point that there are “actually cheap” contemporaneously manufactured phones (Samsung etc). but still, maybe it’s just semantic or pedantic but when 1.3b active iPhones are out there, to me that indicates it is something other than luxury and more importantly does cross a threshold where there are real reasons to consider larger anti-consumer patterns, even if the consumer is choosing the more expensive option.

Anyways I don’t feel too strongly about this either way, I just think the argument here that the iPhone is a luxury device doesn’t absolve them. Other arguments I’m more sympathetic to is all.

[dismalaf]

> iPhones cost somewhere in the realm of $1000 to $2000 give or take

The upfront purchase price is $0 in most rich countries.

[Y_Y]

Coca-Cola is luxury in this sense too.

[Dalewyn]

Absolutely.