I live in Ukraine and I can confirm this. iPhone here is a thing of luxury and status. Funny how people here can spend their entire monthly income on a dated iPhone 6/5s because it's an item of status and they want it so badly.

Chinese smartphones here are dominating the market though. They're pretty much everywhere these days.

>No on countries where 500 euros is around the average salary and consumers have to pay full price for their devices.

Point taken.

I guess I am guilty of having another cultural bias; I assumed pretty much everyone is getting their mobile device through a 24 month+ contract with their network. At least this is how I got my first mobile phone, over 15 years ago.

Yeah, in some countries, pre-paid is the rule, not the exception. I pay $12/month for 500 minutes/SMSs plus 200MB, so the total after 24 months is less than $300 - kinda hard to bundle an iPhone with that amount :)