Tim Cook says purchasing an iPhone X is like buying premium coffee once a day

The iPhone X is now available in Canada, as evidenced by the many Apple fans waiting in lines for many hours to get the tenth anniversary smartphone.

Starting at $1,319 CAD, the iPhone X features an OLED True Tone display with Super Retina, an A11 Bionic chip processor, 3GB of RAM, 12-megapixel dual cameras and Face ID for facial recognition controls.

While that’s certainly a high price tag for a phone, Apple CEO Tim Cook says he doesn’t think the cost is all that significant — at least, when broken down in a different way.

In a recent earnings call with Steven Milunovich, managing director at UBS Securities, Cook defended the iPhone X’s steep price when it came up in their conversation.

“I think a couple years ago, nobody would’ve imagined selling a phone at this price and obviously, you’re pretty confident that you can do it,” Milunovich said to Cook.

In response, Cook likened purchasing the iPhone X to buying a daily cup of premium coffee. “I think it’s important to remember that a large number of people pay for the phone by month,” said Cook. “And so if you were to go out on just the U.S., since that tends to be more of the focus of this call, you look at the U.S. carriers, I think you would find you could buy an iPhone X for $33 a month,” said Cook.

“And so if you think about that, that’s a few coffees a week. Let’s say it’s less than a coffee a day at one of these nice coffee places.”

He added that he feels the price reflects the quality of the product.

“In terms of the way we price, we price to sort of the value that we’re providing,” Cook said. “We’re not trying to charge the highest price we could get or anything like that. We’re just trying to price it for what we’re delivering.”

This isn’t the first time Cook has openly stood behind the price of the iPhone X. Back in September, the Apple executive said the iPhone X is actually being offered at a “value price” based on the technology found in the phone. “As it turns out, most people are now paying for phones over long periods of time,” Cook said in a Q&A segment on Good Morning America. “And so very few people will pay the price tag of the phone initially. Also, most people actually trade in their current phone, and so that reduces the price further, and some carriers even throw in subsidies and discounts.”

In related news, Apple recently published its fourth quarter financial earnings, posting a $52.58 billion net income, which was up 12 percent from the previous quarter.

Via: CNBC