So here's my hot take:

The Samsung S-series phones don't need to be cheaper, Samsung just needs better A-series phones.

Any company can get away with $1000 for premium phones. It's fine. Premium is premium and $1000 is the start of "premium" for the "premium" phones. It's just not the for everyone phone. That's the $500-800 phone.

For iPhones, the value will be whatever Apple says it is. There is no other iOS device besides what Apple makes. They'll price them to make sure the value stays the same. An $1000 phone isn't worth $900, because the $900 phone is worth $900. The $1000 is $1000.

For Android, there's cheaper 5G phones and then you get a $500 with the same features as a $1000 and people think the $1000 shouldn't be $1000 because the $500 can do the same stuff, not realizing there's more to it than that. There's build, brand, software, future R&D.

You can try to determine value for these phones, but the flagships are and will never be about value. It'll be about branding, status, and luxury. They exist to fulfill those desires.

What I see happening is companies are trying to make devices cheaper to go with what people think about the phones, like Samsung makes cheap phones so an $1000 phone isn't worth $1000. Instead, I think they should be making it more "that's only $1000? That's a steal!" like Apple.

Then when you get the premium and luxury branding at the top, you can convince people the cheaper stuff is as premium, even when it's not.

What I see happening is companies are just taking the general mindset and working around that instead of trying to adjust that mindset.

That approach will work short term, sure, but it'll probably be negative in the long run. Especially with foldables.

You can't have 1 product line viewed as premium and the rest as cheap, because that cheapness will encroach into the premium.

You need one strong luxury product line. For Samsung that should be the S-series. You need to make people love that shit. Think it's the best of the best. Then they slowly need to make the A series mimic the S, keeping that premium branding. Then build foldables on top.

Would this work? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not the marketing pros in charge but frankly those marketing pros seem to be doing an ass job lately so throwing out my idea doesn't seem too dumb.