为什么苹果iPhone定价这么高——比如新款iPhone 5C的定价为549美元，而大多数分析师此前预期这款手机的售价会介于300美元至400美元之间。简短的回答是：因为苹果有资本这么干。

    贺拉斯•德迪欧在其Asmyco博客上写道：“如果可以的话，任何人都会这么干。这是一个很蹩脚的问题，因此，正确的问题应该是：为什么有人愿意支付这么高的价格呢？ ”

    德迪欧的回答在很大程度上揭示了手机行业（事实上乃至整个互联网经济）的相关运营方式。他的关键要点如下：

    • 大体而言，消费者并没有支付这些高昂的价格。支付全价的是那些移动运营商—— 270家手机运营商。

    • 运营商在做出是否销售iPhone的决定时，考虑的不是时尚或狂热粉丝这些因素，而是确凿的经济现实——每用户平均收入（ARPU）、客户流失、网络费用、折旧、投资回报率等。

    • 对于许多运营商（约三分之二）而言，iPhone并不适合自己的商业模式。威瑞森公司（Verizon）多年来一直拒绝接受iPhone。DoCoMo刚刚开始接受iPhone。中国移动（China Mobile）可能很快也会接受iPhone。

    • 追逐利润，德迪欧的结论是，运营商之所以向苹果支付如此昂贵的价格，是因为iPhone有助于让用户升级到收入更高的数据业务。

    • 他写道：“对于运营商而言，这些是利润更高的业务。而且补贴模式能够创造更高的忠诚度，从而降低客户流失率，建立一个稳定的现金流，然后就可以借助这些现金流进行债务融资，用以网络升级，同时吸引更多忠实的iPhone用户。”

    • 好处还不止于此。消费者每月支付的手机费会水涨船高，最终支付iPhone大部分溢价的是消费者自己。这些并没有逐项列在发票上，但德迪欧估计，在一个补贴计划中，每月账单上有10美元到15美元用于支付iPhone费用。

    • 德迪欧写道：“因此，在某种程度上，苹果已经成功地把自己列在许多iPhone用户的手机月账单上。手机月账单是隐藏iPhone费用的一个的地方。”

    • 有些消费者把付费转嫁视为一种不加掩饰的欺骗，有误导之嫌。对于用户而言，iPhone的价值显而易见，但为iPhone的价值所支付的费用却不是如此。

    • 德迪欧写道：“事实上，整个互联网以及基于互联网的所有商业计划都依赖于一种微妙的‘占便宜’式的误导。互联网在两个不同的市场之间进行套利，一个是每个人都消费但没有人付费的消费者服务市场，另一个是没有人消费但所有人都付费的数据市场。”

    The short answer for why Apple (AAPL) charges so much for its iPhones -- e.g. $549 for the new iPhone 5C that most analysts expected would sell for somewhere between $300 and $400 -- is that it can.

    "Anybody would if they could," writes Horace Dediu on his Asmyco blog. "That's a poor question. So the right question should be: why does anybody pay this much?"

    Dediu's answer reveals much about underlying workings of the mobile phone business -- and indeed, the whole Internet economy. His key points:

    • Consumers, by and large, aren't paying those high prices. It's the operators -- 270 mobile phone carriers -- who pay the full freight.

    • The decisions operators make on whether to carry the iPhone are driven not by fashion or fanboyism, but by hard economic realities: ARPU, churn, network costs, depreciation, ROI, etc.

    • For many operators -- about two thirds of them -- the iPhone doesn't fit their business model. Verizon held out for years. DoCoMo just came around. China Mobile may soon as well.

    • Following the money, Dediu concludes that the operators who pay Apple's steep prices do so because the iPhone helps move users to higher revenue data services.

    • "These are more profitable services for operators," he writes, "and the subsidy model creates more loyalty and thus reduces churn and creates a stable cash flow which can then be leveraged through debt to upgrade networks and attract yet more loyal iPhone users."

    • But that's not the end of the money trail. Consumers end up paying most of the iPhone premium in the form of higher monthly phone bills. It's not itemized in the invoice, but Dediu estimates that $10 to $15 of every monthly bill in a subsidized plan goes to paying for the phone.

    • "So in a way," Dediu writes, "Apple has managed to place itself on many people's monthly phone bills. It's a nice place to be."

    • Some consumers see that transfer of payment as a thinly veiled con. It smacks of misdirection. The value of the iPhone is apparent to the user, but the payment for that value is not.

    • "In fact the whole Internet and all business plans that are built on it depend on a subtle 'something for nothing' type of misdirection," Dediu writes. "The Internet runs on the arbitrage between a consumer service market where everybody consumes but nobody pays and a separate data market where nobody consumes and everybody pays."