Status signaling might be a thing in certain circles (middle school and high school), but I think it's simpler than that. It's about being in or out.

People might have gravitated towards iPhones for status signaling in their youth, and by association and inertia, their inner circle uses iPhones. now, as adults, any person coming into the circle needs to conform to the group or be seen as clueless.

And in the US, all of the major carriers have 0% interest payment plans. The cost difference is basically nothing over 2 years.

Apple itself sells the phone with 0% interest if you were going to buy AppleCare.

Nobody's paying street price for an iphone in that demo. They get it with their contract

You are talking about people with jobs.

But iPhones sell themselves as expensive, and that's really what lingers in people's consciousness, doesn't it?

No? Something serves as a status signal when the person who has it has a high probability of being different from someone who doesn’t. A private jet is a status symbol because you have a high probability of assuming the person who owns it has a level of wealth or influence that most don’t. A degree from Caltech has status compared to a degree from random college because there’s a high probability the Caltech degree holder is more competent.

An iMessage chat tells me nothing about the socioeconomic characteristics of the owner of the iOS device, unless I am missing something.

Edit: although, now that I have read this whole thread, I am thinking that maybe it’s not the economic status people are looking for, but are somehow deriving some assumption about their “socio” part of “socioeconomic” status, as a non iOS user is perceived to be maybe “different” or “weird” in some way for not conforming and having an Android versus an iOS device.

I personally have never thought that, since I use Signal/WhatsApp/iMessage, and if you don’t have iMessage, I just use one of the other two, and I don’t care. But evidently, some people do.