I guess they have more information about usage patterns than we do. Anecdotally, I have a 256GB iPhone, and I use it consistently for a whole variety of things, and my usage is just under 94GB. I'd bet that my 'normal' family members use a good bit less than that.

Why is that shocking? Delivering a base model with minimal specs and upcharging for the specs that power-users need is Apple's standard way of doing business. If you want to store more, you pay more, either by buying more expensive models, or by subscribing to iCloud.

This pricing strategy is intentional in the way it is limiting to encourage people to buy more expensive models.

They don't offer 128gb as the base tier because they think it will meet everyone's needs. They offer that as the base tier because they think it won't meet everyone's needs. An ideal pricing strategy captures as many sales as possible while also upcharging as many people as possible who would be willing to pay more.

They can sell more iCloud subscriptions that way

With iCloud and music streaming 128GB is enough for a lot of people. I know I still have quite a bit of room left on my 128GB iPhone 12, even with taking tons of photos and videos.

I use around 60 gigabyte on my phone. When I go on holiday I put around 40 gigabyte of offline maps on it. 128 gigabyte is enough for me.

Fair - I'm sure it costs pennies to double the capacity.

But also I just checked and I have 128GB and its fine for me.

Everything is in the cloud now.

128GB is plenty for me.

Why would a storage capacity exceeding 128 GB be necessary? If more than 128 GB of storage is required, why not utilize an SD card or other storage solutions (e.g. HDD / SSD used for your desktop) for storing large files? Is there a practical use case where data needs to be stored and actively accessed on a device with such large storage? For instance, I have a collection of videos totaling approximately 30 GB in size. I should consider transferring these files to my HDD or SSD rather than seeking a device with higher internal storage capacity.

For people who want 256GB, they might as well just buy iphone pro max. It will be just $100 more compared to iphone pro.