Comment by mikestew
15 hours ago
For many people around my area, iPhones are a status symbol choice.
People in your area are very forthcoming. Not once have I ever heard someone vocalize that they bought an iPhone as a status symbol. “Easy to use”, “it’s what my friends use, and they like it”, but never “it makes me appear higher in the social strata”. They might think it, and I’m sure some do, but it’s not said out loud. Or maybe that’s not why the majority buy iPhones, dunno.
My area is eastern europe. Where an iphone is like 3-4 minimum wage salaries or so. People take loans to buy iphones! And you could probably also correlate them with luxury item buyers, around here.
Good thing the US message color thing is isolated over there and the peer pressure on Gen Alpha hasn't reached us.
But yes, I stick to my claim. You don't have to hard press those people to tell you that they don't use phones "for poor people" . The idiom is local and used both ironically and literraly.
Thanks for the context, I imagine it makes a bit of difference. :-)
It's just a "high-end" good here in the States. Elsewhere it's a luxury good, on par with a Rolex. I use an iPhone because of the smooth UI, the integration with my Mac, and the less-evil company that spies on me less. But let's not kid ourselves, these things are spendy, and conspicuous consumption is still a thing.
Paying 2000 USD for a phone absolutely is a status symbol. And nobody actually says a status symbol is one - like nobody says look at my Rolex watch, I paid 50000 USD for it. Nobody needs a 2000 USD phone and nobody needs a 50000 USD watch.
The problem with buying a $2000 iPhone as a status symbol is that no one knows whether you bought the $1100 256GB model or the $2000 1TB model unless you tell them.
But someone that cares about watches knows whether you paid $5000 or $50000 for your Rolex just by looking.
>Not once have I ever heard someone vocalize that they bought an iPhone as a status symbol.
This might come as a shock to you, but people don't vocalize and share their desires and impulses on why they buy or do certain things, why they dress a certain way, why they sleep with certain people, etc. Apple's entire brand was built on being different and desirable at the lizard brain level.
In many parts of the world, people even take bank loans to buy iPhones simply because it's the device that all rich people, politicians, athletes, celebrities, influencers use. They don't buy based on the specs and reviews, they buy on what their lizard brain tells them, and no tech company does that better than Apple.
iPhone is a status symbol is more places than it is “normal” to pay $1k+ for a phone (this is yearly or less salary in most of the world). gotta come down from the ivory tower