Apple doesn’t target the low end (they are a luxury handset maker, their low end is the mid-end at best). The fact that people buy their products anyways shows that cost isn’t the only factor in business success.
Spirit was broken by oil prices because they target the low end customer with their ticket prices. Oil prices went up and they had no pricing headroom to charge more on tickets so they simply went kaput. Ryanair also suffered a fair bit. Other airlines did (comparatively) fine because they had the ability to increase prices since their customers are less price sensitive.
It’s a classical business lesson that being a “cost-sensitive” vs a “value-sensitive” business (what this tradeoff is called) is a tradeoff. It’s notably recommended that startups don’t target the lower end in prices since you can’t compete on cost with a business that has more economy of scale than you; you have to compete on features. And being a cost-sensitive business means that you are affected much more than other businesses by changes in material/component prices, because a 13-cent increase in the cost of a component matters more the more product you sell, and if you increase prices too much customers will start to wonder if the “budget” brand is really a good value proposition over the mid-end or high-end ones anymore.
Ah yes, Amazon, notable for targeting premium end to get started.
Literally everything you're saying doesn't line up with reality. Apple's most popular product today are two lower end (neo and mini).
You make the mistake of thinking your theory defines reality, when in fact reality says quite the opposite here.
I'm saying this because your logic is the classic logic that everyting thinks makes sense until you do it. Everyone can't target the high end, there are limited customers with many choices, making it far harder actually to win.
You target the demand/pain/need regardless of market.
