Tech Brief: Are Smartphones Getting Too Pricey?

How much is too much? That Apple's marquee handset, the iPhone X, is expensive we all know. But is it worth the wallet-breaking price tag? (Latest heard, Samsung might be following suit too with its forthcoming Galaxy S9 smartphone.) Sure, the Face ID-biometric authentication is appealing, as is the near-bezel-less screen experience, not to mention the camera and performance improvements that Apple manages to cram in year after year. But there's only so much you can charge customers for incremental updates. Yet... in an interesting piece of news reported by the Wall Street Journal (paywall) today, it appears that the tech giant is in talks with investment bank Goldman Sachs to offer financing to shoppers buying their products. "Customers purchasing a $1,000 iPhone X could take out a loan from Goldman instead of charging it to credit cards that often carry high interest...," the report added. Irrespective of what comes out of these initial discussions and which party gets to benefit from them, the fact that Apple is even entertaining the thought in the first place is a not so subtle indication that smartphone prices, at least for them high-end ones, are never ever going to come down in the foreseeable future.