Apple on Tuesday is expected to unveil a trio of next-gen smartphones including the OLED-equipped iPhone 8 (or iPhone X… or whatever it ends up being called). The device, alongside other recent flagships like Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8, will help usher in a new era of ultra-premium handsets with an introductory asking price at or near the $1,000 mark.
That’s significantly higher than the current iPhone 7 Plus although Apple could alleviate some of the sticker shock with a bit of bundling.
According to Barclays analyst Mark Moskowitz, Apple could justify the high cost of the iPhone 8 by bundling it with a free subscription to Apple Music and 200GB of iCloud storage for a period of one year. That’s a value of $156 and would bring the perceived price of the entry-level model down to around $844.
The move would help Apple’s services division in the long run as some would undoubtedly stick around after the trial and convert to paying subscribers. It would also expose more people to Apple’s ecosystem which, once invested into, can be difficult to leave.
At the end of the day, however, it’s kind of a moot point.
People desire to have the biggest and baddest of everything, regardless of price. Plus, most don’t even look at the overall cost of a product but rather, how much it’ll set them back per month via financing. A $200 or so price hike spread over 30 months equates to the cost of a cup of coffee.
Apple and Samsung will have absolutely no problems selling their respective $1,000 flagships. By this time next year when the Galaxy Note 9 and iPhone 9 are the talk of the town, nobody will be discussing price.
https://www.techspot.com/news/70913-1000-iphone-8-could-easier-swallow-free-apple.html
