The iPhone is also a vehicle to hook people into the Apple ecosystem, where Services like the App Store bring in 40% of all gross profit with margins of 75%.
It could be that too. But just seeing Apple not raise prices on the face of it, that could be purely from taking lower margins. I'd have to dig into the last earnings call.
Apple hasn't had many models constrained by supply instil recently (Neo, Mini and possibly studio). The ram shortage doesn't seem have have hit them until quite recently. Existing agreements? They pay more to be prioritised?
Yeah, it's a laudable miracle that this $4T+ company could survive this long without raising prices on such razor-thin margins.