> When you're selling hundreds of thousands of phones each day, you no longer become conspicuous.
No true. Increased availability of a product certain reduces the status associated with it, but products serving the purpose of conspicuous consumption exist at almost every level of affordability. There are some product which only the top 0.1% can afford and others which 90% of the population can afford. (Even the homeless community has a hierarchy partially defined by possessions.) Further, the degree to which a product exists to be conspicuously consumed is a continuum, in which the iPhone sits around the middle (although falling, due to it's sales).
Do you really think people, when deciding whether to buy an iPad, don't factor in the fact that all of their friends will ooh and ahh over it when they first see it?
No true. Increased availability of a product certain reduces the status associated with it, but products serving the purpose of conspicuous consumption exist at almost every level of affordability. There are some product which only the top 0.1% can afford and others which 90% of the population can afford. (Even the homeless community has a hierarchy partially defined by possessions.) Further, the degree to which a product exists to be conspicuously consumed is a continuum, in which the iPhone sits around the middle (although falling, due to it's sales).
Do you really think people, when deciding whether to buy an iPad, don't factor in the fact that all of their friends will ooh and ahh over it when they first see it?