>If Apple hadn't been an AT&T exclusive in the US and had adapted to the way people bought phones independent of carriers in most of the world, Android wouldn't

>If Apple hadn't been an AT&T exclusive in the US and had adapted to the way people bought phones independent of carriers in most of the world, Android wouldn't have had a chance. I disagree. Even had iPhone been available from all major US carriers on day one, and quickly launched outside the US in à la carte form, none of that would have made it affordable to most of the world. Cost is the major differential between Apple and Android (bar one or two flagship brands), not whether the carriers in a given country tend to be postpaid or prepaid or offer phones on an installment plan. Would Apple love to have the same market share that it enjoys in the US/UK/Switzerland in the rest of the world? Yes. Would it do so by introducing $99 iPhones? No. Apple just does not play in the lowest-cost price segments, period. It didn't in 1977 with Apple II, in 1984 with Mac 128K, in 2001 with iPod, etc. Lower-priced computers, yes (such as Mac Classic in 1991). But Apple has never, ever served the lowest-priced segments that Dell, HP, Acer, and Lenovo did and do serve as part of their comprehensive product strategies. Two more examples from my time on Wall Street: * I heard Apple's CFO say that his company could release a $799 computer "but we don't want to". Yes, yes, you can today get the previous-gen MacBook Air at the lowest base configuration for that price, and adjusting for inflation the price is significantly lower than $799 15 years ago, but the $799 computer's equivalent today is a $400 HP laptop. * Dell, HP, etc. serve all price points because they feel like they have to, but that doesn't mean they like it. Around the same time as the above, at an investor dinner with the Dell CFO, an attendee asked how sales were of a $299 computer on Dell's print catalog cover. The CFO replied, "the problem with advertising a $299 computer is that people want to buy it". The funny thing is that iPhone really is not that much more expensive than Android (excepting the aforementioned $99 street price models) if you pay attention, but the environment has to allow it. Even if the two-year contract has mostly gone away in the US, postpaid is what allows huge discounts for the savvy. I paid $200 plus tax for my iPhone 13, which I bought through Sprint when it was the current model, merely by trading in an iPhone 8 that I had bought used from Sprint a year earlier for $100. That $200 is paid in $6.67 installments over 30 months (I don't mind, since I have basically the world's greatest phone plan through Sprint/T-Mobile). Such a program just isn't available without a postpaid carrier model to subsidize it, and postpaid in turn seems to be only economically viable in wealthier countries.