Luxury of course is a relative term and in many parts of the world a $450 device would be considered a luxury. I don't think Apple is lightly dismissing the poi

Luxury of course is a relative term and in many parts of the world a $450 device would be considered a luxury. I don't think Apple is lightly dismissing the point, however. Apple does not leverage user data in the same way and their profits are driven by sales of goods and services. Federighi implicitly states that there is an amount of private user data utilized by Google in order to subsidize the cost of the phones. Apple is often compared with Google, but it'd be more appropriate to compare them against Samsung, Huawei, LG, or another phone manufacturer. They produce a limited amount of products that largely serve a higher end market. They produce all their own processors and they don't design low end versions of the chips like Qualcomm do. Could they afford to design lower end chips and offer low end offerings that could serve a broader base? Perhaps, but I doubt they'd like to dilute their brand image in order to do so. Google can say privacy shouldn't be a luxury item but until real action is taken on their part to eliminate their own exploitation of user's private data, it holds no value to me.