Apple's Growth Trails Smartphone Market in 3Q 2013, but Improves in Broader Mobile Phone Market

Spot on. Who the hell wants to spends a lot, sell a lot and make a thin profit. :D

Look at those smartphone numbers again - Samsung are outselling Apple almost 3-to-1.

That means Samsung can afford to have 1/3 of the margin Apple has and make the same massive profits.

Let's ignore business for a moment; wouldn't humanity benefit immensely from more people having access to better technology?

That was Apple's original vision. Not to make massive profits, but to make great products that change the world and to get those products in to the hands of as many people as possible.

Today, the company executing that vision is Samsung. Apple seems to be fixated on profit, despite being extremely financially secure already.

Spot on. Who the hell wants to spends a lot, sell a lot and make a thin profit. :D

Customers do. Customers want high end specs smartphone for low price (thin profit for manufacturer).

For example, this high end specs smartphone is selling for $327 unlocked/off-contract in China.



Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core 2.3GHz CPU
Sharp/LG 5″ 1080P IPS display with ultra-sensitive touch
2GB LPDDR3 RAM
16GB eMMC4.5 flash memory
SONY 13 MP Exmor RS CMOS back camera
2MP BSI front camera
NFC & 2.4/5G WiFi support
3050 mAh battery

And it's outselling the Iphone in China. It's easy to compete when it's half the price of the iPhone while the specs are comparable (if not better).

Aren't profits what matter most? Apple is targeting the middle to high end which is growing. Android can have the bottom end which is also growing but is less profitable.

NO

My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. The products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything.

What ruined Apple was not growth … They got very greedy … Instead of following the original trajectory of the original vision, which was to make the thing an appliance and get this out there to as many people as possible … they went for profits. They made outlandish profits for about four years. What this cost them was their future. What they should have been doing is making rational profits and going for market share.

From a wise man.

Like he said, "shipments."

Not saying Samsung isn't selling smart phones by the boatload. Just that it's hard to know how far ahead they are when Apple gives us "sales" and Samsung gives us "shipments."

Apple gives shipments also.

And really, after 4 years still using the same old boring and meaningless "shipped vs sold" argument.

What's the point of getting the device to the hands of people if the device itself sucks? The way to get 3x the sales of iPhones, android phone manufacturers are releasing crappy phones that are loaded with bloatware and are hard to use.

If they are all that crappy and suck, how come they year after year outsell Apple? How can they have a better growth than Apple? Wouldn't people see through them selling useless phones year after year. Wouldn't they buy an iPhone the next time in that case? Have you actually used a modern Android phone (with objective eyes)? I believe it's amazing how much bang you get for your bucks when it comes to some Android phones compared to the 5C for example.

I certainly hope that the guys at Apple don't have the same opinion, but instead realize that there are a lot of really good Android phones out there. They won't just go away by themselves due to selling cheap crap that people will stop buying. They are a real threat.

I'm not saying Apple is doomed, but it's old and incorrect to brush off the Android phones as cheap crap.

I'm sorry but you can't compare Apple and Samsung here.

How many phones have Apple got on the market get compared to Samsung?

Well, if you want to measure the market share you have to count all the phones. No company having the same number is irrelevant for that figure.