Apple is luxury in China too. Do you really think it's the average Chinese that are buying iPhones?

A worker at Foxconn has about the same discretionary income as blue collar workers in the states; their food and housing is covered by Foxconn, but isn't normally listed as part of their salary.

Now, albeit, they're slightly on the higher end of Chinese workers, but it's not just the shitty aristocrat's kids spending money on iPhones. The people making the things make enough money to buy one, just the same as my hairdresser does.

In that case Foxconn isn't an example of an average company paying average wage. The disposable income per capita in China was 36396 chinese yuan in 2017, which makes a little over 400 USD per month. Median disposable income is even lower. You're not even close to buying iPhones with that kind of wages.

At $400USD/month after food, housing, transportation, and healthcare are taken care of absolutely puts you into iPhone purchasing range.

my friend lives in Beijing and teaches English and gets paid $3k$ / month. So I can bet a lot of folks are paid decently in China too

China has a lot of rich people even if they are far from a majority. It isn’t poor taxi drivers and ayis using iPhones, but more like those who are driving black Audis.

That is now, not back when it was launched.