These days it's completely useless to steal an iPhone, if you have it locked with a passcode and touch ID. Thieves who do steal iPhones these days often do so for parts."They can take the phone apart and sell each part for a different price.Iphones are stolen from people then they are being sold for their parts for a fraction of the price of an iphone.Back in California, there was a contraband which handed off to Wen and Tan,(Wen and Tan are suppliers in Asia that do contraband), who arranged to have the phones shipped to their contacts in Asia. The profit margin was enormous: In North America, wireless carriers typically subsidize the cost of our smartphones in order to lure us into multiyear voice and data contracts. To obtain a phone, in other words, we fork over a small fraction of the device’s actual market worth. Wen and Tan took advantage of the system by obtaining iPhones—through middlemen and mules—for $200 a pop, then selling them in China for close to $1,000. This is one of the many problems that stealing iphones pose." From the Wired. a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/12/where-stolen-smart-phones-go
"Apple iPhone is more than just a smartphone. When you purchase an Apple iPhone, you are purchasing the iPhone ecosystem as well – everything from access to the 1.5 million apps (as of July 2015) in the Apple App Store to the free iMessage, FaceTime and iCloud services. Android users may argue that they have similar features but what they have is sometimes a pale shadow of what the Apple iOS platform currently offers.when someone considers the cost of a platform, it should be done holistically because when you buy an Apple iPhone, you are really buying an experience. Apple iPhone users (generally) want a smartphone that “just works”. They do not care so much about specifications as much as they do the experience using the iPhone. They do not care so much about the number of features as they do the experience of those features that are available. For that, they are willing to pay top dollar." -from http://www.techarp.com/articles/why-apple-iphones-are-so-expensive"
