Is this totally true? There is advertising, marketing spend and retail shelf space. Surely it's more complex than "solves users problem at price point."
Advertising and marketing spend exist to make people aware of the device's capabilities and its price. I would be surprised to find that any consumer chooses a device because of its marketing spend and retail shelf space.
You wrote “I would be surprised to find that any consumer chooses a device because of its marketing spend”. But advertising does skew consumer choice by its presentation, and the success correlates with marketing spend. It’s far from merely informational. Otherwise we’d just have black on white listings of “this product exists” with spec sheets.