What HN commenters have realised is there is an entire class of commenters who simply don't mind inventing figures or whatever it takes to create a straw man, even though they're not congruent with reality, it doesn't matter, and so the poster gets to declare victory.

> not competitive in price

Yeah those rubes paying Apple's $793 ASP could gotten a Galaxy S9+ for only $840. Or a Pixel 3 starting at $799,a Pixel 3XL for $899, a Note 9 starting at $1000 or a Huawei P20 Pro for €899 instead.

I'm one of those people. I was getting iPhones every 2 years, but my phones were laying around wasted. I would rather "rent" my iphone and switch it out every year for essentially the same cost, and not have to deal with the phones laying around. Plus getting Apple Care every year makes sense now with the screens being so expensive to fix.

>even though they’re not competitive in price

Explain to me how having the fastest silicone in the business is not "competitive" in price? I mean if you are the top dog, you kinda get to set the stage, no?

You mean “silicon”, not “silicone”. (Or maybe you do mean “silicone”?)

Right you are, silicon. Thank you. Not caulking material :)

They do have the best silicone, and I was trying to explain why they get to set the price they do and get away with it.

It’s just that, for example in South Africa the new iPhone XS costs R22000-24000 which is $1500 - the Samsungs and especially the Huawei’s are much cheaper. You can get a P20 lite for like R5000 which is an outstanding phone. But again many South Africans can afford the iPhone.

Well of course! Not everyone needs the best CPU. I recently got Huawei Mate for my mother in law for let's see 1/7th of what I paid for my IPhone XS Max. Some people do (I play a lot of 3D games and what not), but vast majority of the people do not. It's just that Huawei and Samsung have offerings that span the whole range of prices whereas Apple only covers ultra-premium segment. And if you venture into Apple prices are comparable to others (and command much better resale).