[jerod]

I think we can all agree that life in China and wages in China are both cheap. And worst of all... You have to live in China. But if you want to only pay $1,000+ per phone, then you need to make them in China. Otherwise, you’d be paying $10,000 for a phone.

The reality is, phones cost next to nothing to manufacture and phone companies do not pay very much for these phones. They sell them at exorbitant prices or charge customers monthly to have a phone. Charging monthly for a phone was eliminated in the home phone market back in the 1980s... At that time phone companies used to charge customers for their phones... Customers ended up shelling out monthly rent over a 20 year period and essentially paying hundreds of times the actual cost of the phone.

So what goes around, comes around. It’s all back to square one and phone companies are doing the same thing today that the government outlawed them from doing years ago.

[Elsie]

Customers ended up shelling out monthly rent over a 20 year period and essentially paying hundreds of times the actual cost of the phone.

Now it's just set-top-boxes and WIFI routers that are done this way by your kindly ISP folks.

[Zhang Fei]

[The reality is, phones cost next to nothing to manufacture and phone companies do not pay very much for these phones. They sell them at exorbitant prices or charge customers monthly to have a phone. ]

---

Actually, Apple gets ~$700 a phone on which it nets about 25%, last I remember. The phone companies sell phones below cost, but tack on services to cover the remainder. Net margins on sales for Verizon, the most profitable operation? ~12%.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/financials?p=AAPL&.tsrc=fin-srch
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VZ/financials?p=AAPL&.tsrc=fin-srch

[minnesota_bound]

I can buy all sorts of smart phones for under $200