Interesting video, particularly the statistics around where the majority of the market is in Western countries. If you buy a base S24 in Germany, you are actually spending less money on your phone than over 70% of the country, for example. The ultra high end market absolutely dominates despite seemingly everyone complaining about how expensive phones are these days.
The video doesn’t really answer the question, though. It sort of implies that it’s because we are keeping smartphones for longer and because they are becoming increasingly important parts of our lives as our screen time also increases. Manufacturers are also able to bait consumers into buying these crazy expensive phones with trade-in and bundle deals (throwing in “discounted” watches and TWS earbuds, for example).
I feel like the fact that service providers routinely offer deals to incentivize you to get phones would help.