Touché. I apologise, you are correct. You are still avoiding answering my criticism of your original thesis.
Edit: I’ll append the approximations at the base of my heuristic:
* I only care about marginal $deltas when comparing
* an extra shipping container costs $10000
* one cubic metre holds 1000 one litre boxes
* a charger costs Apple $5
* total marginal $delta shipping costs are less than 10 times the delta in shipping costs
* Apple use 20 foot containers
Although on second thought, they must use planes otherwise inventory in transit would be astronomical, but I still believe that marginal savings from not producing a charger dominates (by over 10x) the savings from smaller packaging.
They ship by plane, and I believe it's constrained by weight, not volume. I.e. iPhone 12 Pro weighs 189 grams, packaging + cable approx 50 grams more. And USB-C 20W brick is 62 grams.
I.e. adding power brick would increase shipping weight and cost by 25%.
Edit: I’ll append the approximations at the base of my heuristic:
* I only care about marginal $deltas when comparing
* an extra shipping container costs $10000
* one cubic metre holds 1000 one litre boxes
* a charger costs Apple $5
* total marginal $delta shipping costs are less than 10 times the delta in shipping costs
* Apple use 20 foot containers
Although on second thought, they must use planes otherwise inventory in transit would be astronomical, but I still believe that marginal savings from not producing a charger dominates (by over 10x) the savings from smaller packaging.