CELL PHONES/MOBILE PHONES WHY ARE THEY SO EXPENSIVE?

Hello everone

A few years ago I was involved in importing cell phones/mobile phones into my country albeit on a small scale as I didn't have massive funds. During that period I learnt quite a bit about how the market works and the substantial profits that are made from everyone involved.
Firstly the actual value o a phone is minimal. they are mass produced with the individual parts costing cents. I am going back 5 or six years now and the phones real cost was in the region of $3 to manufacture each one. These phones were retailing for $100's of dollars depending on the model etc. I used to wander why the huge markups if the phone only cost a few dollars. The research and development of these phones goes into the millions of dollars to outdo their competitors. Even still they sell millions of their models each month and i still can't justify these numbers in my head. There has to be overlapping technology going forward on these new models where the Rand D has already been done on previous models. Maybe the camera has improved etc or the battery lasts longer.

Then we have the network providers who make a fortune on their packages. They don't really care how much they pay because you will pay it for them via your package. There is an auction house in Dubai that clears phones in bulk and most traders buy from them. I got out of the game as there were too many negatives for my liking. By the time you the end user gets your phone it has most likely gone through 4 or five sets of hands each making their mark ups along the way. This is why you pay $100's of dollars for your handset and maybe it should only be $100 at a push. The greed is quite disgusting and now as a rule of thumb whatever I see in the shops I divide by 3 to get the real cost of an item.