op mentioned apple core is privacy. i implies that they care it only for their high end customers. They could anytime do a low end mobile if privacy was their core. Their core is like any other business get maximum profits.
Apple's premium price is exactly what allows them to focus on privacy.
Google/Facebook/etc. are able to offer you cheap products and services because they're selling your privacy to the highest bidder.
Apple is not doing this (because they care about privacy), so they need to charge a much higher price for similar products.
This is somewhat of a chicken and egg problem (did Apple care about privacy and charge a premium price, or did charging a premium price allow them to start caring about privacy?), but that's arguably not important. What's important is that Apple cares about privacy when their competitors do not.
If Apple cared about privacy they would have left China instead of giving up it's iCloud key.
They are focusing on it because of business sense. To upsell people who are able to buy those expensive devices otherwise all devices are now more or less can do the work.
Apple can easily lower their price to match android. They do have insane profits. But I don't see they care about lower class people.
