But the "tier" is just lower priced compared to other Apple products, not lower priced compared to competitors.

The average selling price of an Android phone is $202 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/309472/global-average-se...). That's still $150 less than the cheapest iPhone.

The average selling price of a tablet is still much less than the lowest cost iPad.

Apple doesn't sell iPods anymore except the iPod in name only iPod Touch.

Apple only has about 12% world wide market share in smart phones.

I understand that. My point being that, at least for "mobile distraction device", Apple does in fact have a tiered, price-discriminating (in the economic sense) set of products.

There's also the used-device market, as noted by another reader. I'd considered making that point as well, though uncharacteristically for me I decided to focus on a single thread.