Now ask yourself, is that because Google isn’t subsidizing device costs… Or perhaps…

If you have economies of scale, and are competing on ground other than having the highest specs on paper, yes. If you’re using the latest hardware and not moving Google volumes of devices though it’s not as easy to keep prices down.

Biggest challenge GOS has is that most hardware vendors do not meet their fairly restrictive hardware security requirements, and those few that do don’t typically allow bootloader unlocking. Pixel devices up until now have been unicorns in those regards.

Unfortunately a lot of “budget” items are being subsidized by your personal information, and the smaller market for privacy-forward goods and services makes economies of scale harder.

Unless governments start passing robust privacy laws, it will just continue to get more and more expensive to live privately with modern conveniences.