Well the iPhone is their only mass market luxury good, and that's simply because people don't pay the whole cost at once. The get it on credit, under contract,

Well the iPhone is their only mass market luxury good, and that's simply because people don't pay the whole cost at once. The get it on credit, under contract, from their mobile provider. I don't know the history of mobile phone contracts before the iPhone but i feel like that was Apples innovation (or they made the best use of it), rather than the product being so good that everyone had to spend ~$800-$1000 up front for one. Not that it isn't a good product, just without a phone contract it would have sold far less at the premium price point. In fact iPhone phone contracts seemed to spawn a trend in getting many other products on credit (and over paying for them). Also, I seem to remember Apple pushing mobile network providers hard to almost subsidise the cost of the handset around the 2012s, when they were still competing at market share with Android phones.