Are Apple and other smartphone manufacturers straight-up gouging you when it comes to smartphone storage? LaptopMag’s Mark Spoonauer seems to think so and he makes a case that there is no real reason that a 32GB smartphone should cost a full $100 more than a 16GB smartphone.
“Smartphone manufacturers pay a measly 50 cents per gigabyte for smartphone storage,” Spoonauer fumes. “So, increasing the standard storage from 16GB to 32GB would cost just $16 per phone. Some flagship phones have already gone this route, but why not all of them?”
Spoonauer notes that Apple isn’t the only manufacturer to seemingly charge you way too much money for a 16GB phone, although he also points out that at least with Samsung’s 16GB phones you can expand your storage relatively cheaply by using its microSD card slot to install a 32GB card that costs a mere $20.
Still, there are alternatives to the iPhone — Spoonauer acknowledges that the LG G3 and the Amazon Fire Phone, among others, are offering 32GB smartphones for $200 on contract. Not only that, but most Apple fans buy Apple products knowing that they’re paying a premium compared to other brands and choose to do so anyway just because they love Apple so much.
So while Spoonauer may have a point that Apple really doesn’t need to charge you $100 for a 32GB iPhone that doesn’t even have a microSD card slot, he can’t say that he didn’t have a choice in the matter.
