Every year, smartphone manufacturers tend to introduce in their products something new and innovative. It’s not just about the performance of the smartphone anymore, as the manufacturers try their best to make phones more and more eye catching. But they all come with a price, a high price, and it doesn’t seem like the high prices imposed by the manufacturers will be brought on to a halt any time soon. And it’s not just the high end smartphones that cost a fortune. Even the standard premium phones come with a huge price tag.
The iPhone 7 started out with $649, however the iPhone 8 came out at $699. The galaxy s7 came at a price of $650, while the s8 got a straight boom to $720. Even the Oneplus phones are catching on. When the first Oneplus one arrived, it came at a price of just $300, and was deemed to be the flagship one with the ability to sweep the market, at a moderate price.
But now, even the Oneplus 6 came with a price of $529. This still represents value for money when compared to other flagship phones, but it is undeniably true that a company we thought over to be providing flagship phones at a moderate price are now following the pattern of other companies, and are too releasing phones which are getting more and more expensive, year by year. It can be a “cartel understanding” or may be a mad rush to make as much revenue as one can.
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So why exactly is this happening? What’s the reason behind this? Why are smartphones getting more and more expensive, year by year? Well, many analysts have different point of views.
Amongst the more popular opinions that the analysts have is the point that customers are willing to pay premiums for smartphone devices because it is arguably one of the most, if not the most important product in their lives. This is obviously great for the manufacturers. Greater demand means they can monopolize, and hence the companies can charge higher prices.
Here it is important to note that with low cost Chinese human resource at the helm of all manufacturing besides the economy of scale afforded by companies manufacturing the product under debate; charging high prices due to so called input costs does not makes a valid rationale; unless proven otherwise.
While the consumers and the market observers might argue as to why the manufacturers still want to charge the high prices; it is not something happening in isolation. We live in a world where almost everything in “updated” except for the human value system! Such an environment automatically triggers the consumer decision to buy the new version’ not even realizing that the older version might still be catering to all user specific needs.
Pretty much every expert has their own opinion on the matter. It is true that this pattern of high prices charged by the phone companies needs to stop, however as stated above, with other elements involved, it might not all be their faults. With the passage of time, things might change, and we’ll just have to wait and see.
