The first impression is the last impression. It determines how people around you look at you. Conduct and attire are some things that society considers when they want to define you. However, the two elements can’t accurately say whether you’re wealthy or not. One property that can’t lie is a phone.
Many people, including experts, believe that anyone carrying an iPhone is rich. Why so? iPhone is named among things that are an acceptable symbol of wealth not only in America but also across the world. It’s seen as a reliable indicator that a person carrying it lies in the high-income category. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the individual is loaded with cash, but the owner is ready to offer something to have it.
This perceptive rises due to consumer behavior, media consumption, and social attitudes. So then, here is why the phone you use determines your social status.
What is a Status Symbol?
As mentioned, someone can categorize you as either wealthy or not based on specific objects that you have. Any object that they use to determine your social and economic standing is known as a status symbol.
Status symbols change with culture and value. These items are tied to monetary wealth in capitalistic societies or cultures where private businesses and individuals own capital goods. In others, a person’s vocation is used as a status symbol such as warriors, army, or pilots. Even bodily scars are used to represent courage or honor hence a status symbol.
The most popular status symbols include:
Expensive Items: These include luxury vehicles, watches, phones, jewelry, etc. These items cost higher than a home down payment. They are mostly inaccessible by lower economic classes that is why they are status symbols. The demand for the status symbols goes up when they become costly because their utility is derived from their high price.
Uniforms: These signify membership to an organization such as law enforcement or the military. It may also symbolize specialty, rank, tenure, and much more about the owner’s social status in the organization. The medals, decorations, or badges in these uniforms can show that the wearer has official or heroic status.
Is iPhone a Symbol of Wealth?
People estimate an individual’s financial wellbeing by the phone they’re using. As a result, a person carrying an iPhone is put in the high-income group because, usually, Apple products are regarded as a status symbol. Therefore owning an Apple iPhone smartphone puts you among the wealthy and famous because these products are sold at utterly high prices, thus setting the bar high.
People use their iPhone without a protective case which enhances its status symbol even more. It shows those around you that you’re unafraid of the risk of dropping it and the price of repairing any damage. Therefore the stature of the iPhone is tied to its price. The cost of owning the latest iPhone model is high, which means it’s premium, making it exclusively for the wealthy class. In fact, iPhone 13 Pro Max 1TB is around $1,599, and new iPhone 14 models might hit the market in September 2022 based on the previous launch timelines. Apple’s marketing team will present the new model as the best among the previously released ones. So it’s the elite that has no problem updating to the latest version.
Additionally, Apple gives the consumers of its products a sense of exclusivity and poshness. For instance, it’s very easy to share ad receive files from one android phone to another, even if the two are from different companies. However, that is not the case with Apple products such as iPhones. In other words, you can only link devices that’re exclusively from this company. In fact, it’s expected that you should own all other Apple devices such as iPad, Mac P, Apple Watch, Apple Air pods, etc. Because of such exclusivity, iPhones work best under the Apple environment, and your phone will be nearly 50% useless because you can’t link it with Android devices.
Therefore your friends can categorize you on the top or bottom income quartile depending on your iPhone model. This is similar to how the community viewed the owner of an automatic dishwasher in the 1990s. For that reason, an iPhone is a symbol of wealth and is mostly used by higher-income states because they prefer this Apple product over Galaxy phones. In fact, purchasing an iPhone is seen as everything.
