"palatable $520"?
$5 is an impulse buy. $50 is a hesitant impulse buy. $500 is only an impulse purchase if you make a fat sack of cash every year & consider dropping $1K the same way some of the rest of us treat dropping $1.
Someone earning minimum wage is going to think long & hard before dropping their rent/food/meds/utility bill money on a phone. That's a "nice to have" not "required to survive" style item. Unless they're also the kind that thinks nothing of living on maxed out credit cards so they can live in a lifestyle far beyond their means, you get yourself a phone that works, that you can afford comfortably, & you keep it until it physicly falls apart. You can't afford to splooge $1k+ on the newest shiny device just because the marketing fucktards tell you to.
TL;DR: Make devices priced in the impulse buy range for lower income folks and you *might* see those sales figures go up, but price it as something they may have to choose between food/rent/bills/meds and your device? Kiss those sales goodbye.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
