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I'll add that most of HP's desktops and servers are assembled in the U.S. They don't seem to be having any problems getting screws despite being the #2 computer maker by volume, so they probably sell 2-3 orders of magnitude more PCs than Mac Pros.

Further, their share of smartphones is growing with respect to Android. So their 30% commission isn't in danger.

But this stupid article quotes stock market analysts and a random tourist. No evidence that Apple is messing up. Just opinions unconnected to data, and instead the analysts are just comparing to some ideal that they imagine.

Where did you get this data? A quick search on Google shows a different story. In the US, Apple has a larger market share than each of the individual competitors, but not when you combine the Android manufacturers. In fact, Apple's market share slipped this last quarter by 1%. In the Global market, Apple is in third place. In regards to Phone activations in the US Apple has remained steady or declined a bit.

The only place where Apple made gains is in China where they increased their market share by 5%, from 19.7% to 24.7%. Android dropped by 5%.

US Phone Activations
https://www.statista.com/stati...

Global Market
https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp...
https://www.businessinsider.co...

US Market
https://www.counterpointresear...

That's the cruel joke that all the Fandroids like to play. Apple is a BRAND (and a Platform). Android is NOT a BRAND.

You simply cannot compare the two.

Further, their share of smartphones is growing with respect to Android. So their 30% commission isn't in danger.

But this stupid article quotes stock market analysts and a random tourist. No evidence that Apple is messing up. Just opinions unconnected to data, and instead the analysts are just comparing to some ideal that they imagine.

Where did you get this data? A quick search on Google shows a different story. In the US, Apple has a larger market share than each of the individual competitors, but not when you combine the Android manufacturers. In fact, Apple's market share slipped this last quarter by 1%. In the Global market, Apple is in third place. In regards to Phone activations in the US Apple has remained steady or declined a bit.

The only place where Apple made gains is in China where they increased their market share by 5%, from 19.7% to 24.7%. Android dropped by 5%.

US Phone Activations
https://www.statista.com/stati...

Global Market
https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp...
https://www.businessinsider.co...

US Market
https://www.counterpointresear...

Here you go.

Huawei smartwatch market share is only 2 points behind apple.

Wrong. Try at least 10 points behind. Still.

Doofus, Apple went from 61% share of the smarwatch market to 17% today.

From a majority of a "smartwatch" market incluing Apple and Samsung -- but not Fitbit and others who made "basic wearables" -- to 17% today where there is almost no such thing such thing as "basic wearables" because the survivors have all moved into "smartwatches." Odd how you insist upon starting in 2015, versus 2016 (10.8%) or 2014 (0% - no Apple watch). Perhaps because in 2015 Apple and Samsung were the only game in town, and Samsung was a distant also-ran.

I would not be surprised if Apple hits single digits by this time last year.

Can't hit single digits by this time last year because, like, that already happened, and Apple's market share increased from 10.8% in 2016. Do try to keep up.

This butt ugly power hungry product update practically guarantees it.

Apple will be shipping its updated product back in time? Wow! Triple digit sales growth here we come! /s

Here's more proof: iOS continues to lose market share and even in the US, all iOS devices now number about the same as just Samsung, one of multiple Android players. Was that from the headphone jack, or the general slide in iOS quality overall? I tend to think it's both, given the headphone market is continuing to explode and Apple basically locked themselves out of a vast majority of it.

So where's your proof?

The problem with that figure is that includes ALL Samsung phones; not just those that compete head-to-head against Apple's models. When you start breaking it out by model, an entirely different picture emerges, with Apple holding the first AND second place, in terms of units sold, with a low-end Samsung phone in third place (and no other Samsung models in the top 5) :

https://www.bbva.com/en/top-se...

In fact, it is really hard to figure out exactly what Samsung is selling significant numbers of, with THIRTY ONE NEW models of Samsung phones INTRODUCED in 2016 alone! But I bet my bottom dollar that the vast majority of 2017's UNIT sales figures for Samsung are actually cheap-shit "giveaway" phones. :

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Samsung is still selling phones with a 5 MP back camera and 4 GB of storage, FFS!

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu...

Or how about this beauty? Released in 2014 (!!!) and Still available! 2 MP main camera, 4 GB. Looks like it came straight from 1999:

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu...

You may laugh: But every one of those phones counts as Samsung's UNIT Sales:

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu...

And, although Apple's unit sales were down 1.3% year-over-year in 2017, Samsung's unit sales were down a whopping 4% in the same time period. Plus, despite the somewhat lower-than-expected sales of the iPhone X, Apple bested Samsung in unit sales in Q4 of 2017.

https://www.idc.com/promo/smar...

But we can go back and forth with statistics all night long. Both companies are doing quite well, and neither has any real signs of drying up and blowing away any time soon. Can we just agree that's the REAL answer to all this?

User replaceable batteries or at cost battery replacement of non user replaceable batteries prolongs cell phone life. Which is good for consumers and bad for the manufacturer's profits.

Same with user upgradeable Ram and storage.

Of course this is why Apple and Samsung have moved to non user replaceable batteries. And Apple have moved to soldered Ram and SSD on laptops. Of course neither has been exactly open about the reasons for this and the effect it has on total cost of ownership for users.

Presumably Windows laptop vendors would have moved to soldered everything if they had as much of a market share as Apple have with iOS (100%) and Samsung have with Android.

The interesting thing is that Samsung isn't as dominant as you'd expect

https://www.androidauthority.c...

They used to have 65% of the market

http://info.localytics.com/blo...

Now it seems like they're more like one of many vendors than a near monopolist

https://www.idc.com/promo/smar...

Hopefully this will make them produce some phones I'll actually want to buy when my LG V20 wears out.

The sad thing is even though Apple sell about 15% of phones and about 8% of desktops everyone else seems to think if they copy Apple they'll sell more stuff.

It never seems to occur to them that when people buy an Android or Windows device instead of an Apple one, it might be because they don't like the way Apple do stuff and therefore copying Apple is not a good idea.

The problem is all the tech journalists are Apple fanboys and if they see other platforms copying Apple they shower them with praise. And then keep buying only Apple stuff.

Apple are more evil than Microsoft. However they don't have the same monopoly power. Most people using Macs could switch to Windows - everyone except for people who want to run XCode and a few other corner cases where the application they need only runs on macOS. But for the average Mac user everything they need is on Windows. And probably on Linux too.

Google are also more evil than Microsoft and they control a larger chunk of the mobile market. E.g.

https://www.idc.com/promo/smar...

Right now it's 85.0% Android 14.7% iOS.

So Google has a domination of the mobile market similar to Microsoft's domination of the desktop market. And if you look at mobile and desktop you find that Android and Windows are level pegging.

http://gs.statcounter.com/os-m...

Windows still dominates desktops but tablets and phones are gradually taking over from desktops. Since Microsoft have given up on Windows phone the odds are that Google will eventually have a Microsoft like domination of the whole market.

I.e. Google already has the dominance of mobile Microsoft had on desktops. And as mobile takes over from desktops they will end up with the dominance they have of the whole market.

And of course the have the most used search engine, the most used video sharing site and the most used browser. Plus, unlike Microsoft or even Apple, they're willing to use their market dominance to shut down ideas they dislike. Microsoft and Apple only use(d) theirs to cripple their competition, something Google does with alacrity too.

Microsoft was a bit like the Shah or Czar - a dictator sure but so long as you didn't directly oppose them they'd leave you alone. Google is like the Ayatollah or Lenin - even if you didn't directly oppose them they might decide to target your group for purging for, as they see it, the good of the body politic.

Your information is several years out of date. On "newer" versions of Android (basically any phone made in the past 3-4 years)

Let's correct a common misconception to help open a few eyes; there's a few grim reasons for the "out of date" statement... it's not that out of date. Here's the gist of what turned out to be a long post:
"Android has had granular permissions for a while" only affects people on Android 6 (Nov 2015) and newer. It's just December 2017. Most people repeating the factoid also don't tend to consider that there's only a near-coinflip chance (46 versus 54 per hundred) that their Android-wielding listener lacks that assumed protection due to grim realities in Android version penetration issues.

To see why Android usage is an important part of smartphone versions, here are some numbers. Smartphones make up about 35+ % of site visits with some projections from 2016 estimating 2017 ownership at close to 5 billion around the globe. Though /.ers have known that Apple had a commendable granular permissions setup for a long while, about 85% of those worldwide smartphones are on Android.

I can't find numbers on whether Android phones for most non-tech folks are OEM-upgraded flagships phones. Apparently Apple and Samsung (and HTC) dominate the vast majority of phone purchases, so perhaps things aren't too bad given the first 2 are known for expensive flagships. Flagships are important because other phones in Android land usually get stuck with no updates, and even dare ship with the Android version from a year or two PRIOR to their release date.

Version SIX is where all the touted granular permissions came out for Android.. That it was a new feature back in 2015 is discussed on paragraph 3 of this read for a beta of what was released some months later in 2015. This other read is more useful but puts up an anti-popup warning)

I bought an LG G3 phone in May 2015, (it had been LG's newest flagship 12 months earlier and had already been phased out by the G4 when I bought it). It runs a version 4.4 build that I did not bother upgrading to v5. Apparently version 6 did get released over the air for my carrier, but today is first I've heard of it. That release was in May 2016. Marshmallow, Android version 6 came out in November 2015.

We're STILL in 2017. This permissions empowerment is slightly over 2 years "new", not 4. The number TWO is also associated with the years a US contract lasts out there*. There are probably a thousands of US consumers out there that are still tied to that contract with a phone built with the old all-or-nothing permissions model, or just got a new phone with that model, living under 2 years of app tyranny.

Versions 6 and 7 of Android have this model, but only make up 46 percent of Android phones as of September, but this leaves a whopping 54% of Android users in the all-or-nothing world. Here's a chart from Sept 2017

It feels good denying random crap to apps. Maps wants "Contacts" "Location" "Phone" and "Storage". It freezes when I deny it location access, but the funny thing is, it then lies about this:
"This app won't work properly unless you allow Google play services' request to access" Calendar, Camera, Contacts, Microphone, Body Sensors, SMS, Storage. Notice that even with the new model, that shows a clear, dubious discrepancy be

Doubled and yet still only barely at 1% marketshare! Great success!

How about 2.98% . Sure it may not be much when compared to Microsoft's dominance but that still translates to ten's of millions. Anyway if you look at the smartphone market Android which has a Linux kernel dominates with around 85% market share and that translates to hundreds of millions.

If you look at the predominate operating system kernel for supercomputers Linux comes in at almost 100%. The main reasons why Microsoft dominates the desktop is predominately what is known as the "Microsoft Tax: and the intransigence of the average person to move to a different operating system once they have started to use the "default" operating system. A bit like some religions. :-)

"Don't believe me? Here's some opinion unsupported by facts", he said.

The mobile market is *growing*. 2016 was actually a slow year, but sales still grew ~2%. Predictions are that sales volume will grow even more in 2017.

If you have any doubts, just type "mobile market growth" on Google and see for yourself. Here's a random link (fell free to blast the source and ignore reality):

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?...

From that article: "[...] IDC believes 2017 will be a turnaround year for iPhone volumes with shipments expected to grow 4.9% over 2016." (there's a similar growth prediction for Android).

No matter how you slice it, the market is growing. One would have to pull off some amazing acrobatics to pretend that this is not true.

Tim Sweeney (of Epic Games) stated (before the price reduction) Vive is outselling Rift 2:1. Since UE4 is used in many VR games he would have access various data like royalty figures to make a pretty educated guess.

Valve's hardware survey results also reflect similar trend.

There are independent firms also tracking sales that seem to agree with these figures. Palmer disputes them he doesn't really give any specific evidence.

Sorry, volume shipments means more, especially when the sell-through rate is very close to the shipments. Just shipping a shit ton of product to a reseller where it sits and rots doesn't count (Apple doesn't do this, but it's a trick used in the past to elevate reported sales numbers - Windows RT surface tablets come to mind here).

My point is that there are several metrics you could use for distinguishing "largest" - market cap is one, but it's not a very good one. Market cap is a multiple of stock price, and stock price is volatile and vulnerable to hype bubbles. It also takes into account the total assets of the corporation, and all business - does the mountain of cash that Apple is sitting on overseas really add anything to how many units they ship? How about real estate? Does that matter? Because it's certainly factored into market cap.

Unit shipments, market penetration, and market share are probably better metrics to use; and as I said before, unless you count phones in with everything else, Apple doesn't come up on top - not even second.

Include iPad all you want - iPad + Mac still doesn't beat Lenovo or HP. In Q2, Apple sold 8.92 million iPads, and 4.11 million Macs. Total of 13.03 million "computers". Note that my cited sources are hardly press that are unfriendly to Apple.

Lenovo sold 12.3 million PCs in around the same time period (and that's with HP taking the #1 spot), plus another 2.1 million tablets - hey, if you include iPad in Apple's numbers, you should also include Lenovo's tablets. That's a total of 14.4 million "computers".

13.03 million < 14.4 million. And Lenovo isn't even #1 in traditional PC sales - HP is with 13.1 million PCs sold - still more than Apple's combined Macs + tablets.

Yeah, I know - Apple makes more money than the other guys. You don't think some of that comes from the iPhone, do you? Or maybe the online services - I hear that iTunes is fairly popular. Or maybe software sales?

When you compare like numbers, Apple just doesn't hold the crown. And you know what? That's perfectly fine - they aren't looking to be #1 in market share, just the same as BMW and Mercedes aren't - selling a high quality product with a healthy margin on it has been Apple's business since the late 90s, and there's nothing wrong with that.

But let's not inflate them to be what they aren't.

But hey, a 51.6% year over year drop can't be meaningful. https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS41875116

Yes, iOS gets occasional "blips" of big days, but the trend is unmistakable. iOS is sliding into irrelevancy (single digit market share) while Android is clearly taking it all.

"Linus share of the desktop has doubled in the last ~year to 2.2%. That's a nice jump."
Nice backhanded insult masquerading as a compliment, but entirely nonfactual.
Using a Windows centric website as a source for desktop market share is like asking a Met fan to rate the Dodgers.
One can pick any website that tracks the OS of visitors. Here's one:
http://distrowatch.com/awstats...
According to the data on that webpage WIndows has a 39% market share and Linux has 47.2%

Or this site, which shows Linux at 5.6%
http://www.w3schools.com/brows...

None of these take into account two factors: agent switching and multiple installs. I can set my browser to emulate IE running on Win7 (NT) even though I've been using Linux for 18 years.

Microsoft uses it sales channel to indicate total sales, which it has manipulated by including units setting in warehouses as well, in order to inflate their sales. They also used that trick when they reported total WinPhone sales, which are still in the toilet. When I download a Linux ISO from a website I can and have installed that single ISO on several computers. Those computers previously ran Windows. The tally of Windows sales does not decrease when I replace Windows with Linux, and no one knows for sure how many Linux ISOs have been downloaded and how many devices those downloaded ISO files have been installed on. So, market share is meaningless.

The "Year of Linux" was, for me, 1998. May 1st of that year was when I replaced Win95, an OS which I had to reinstall 5 times in the previous 4 months, with RH 5.0, which came with the book "Learn Linux in 24 Hours", by BIll Brush. My new Sony VAIO, which I thought was trash, ran faultlessly without a single crash until I replaced RH in September of that year with SuSE 5.3, because it featured KDE 1.0 Beta. I am now in my 7th year of running Kubuntu.

If you count Linux running on smartphones then the Linux smartphone marketshare is 87.4% and the WInPhone share is 0.4%
http://www.idc.com/prodserv/sm...

Until the SCOTUS destroyed software patents with its "Alice" ruling Microsoft made more money ($5+Billion) extorting smartphone makers who used Android, using bogus DOS patents, than they made selling their own smartphone.

Android has close to 90% market share everywhere. http://www.idc.com/prodserv/sm...

About 90% of all shipments are Android, iOS is down around 10%. Seems to be working fine so far.

That's OK, the Apple fanboys will continue to slide into irrrelevancy as iOS continues to shed marketshare... Not too far into the future they'll be as irrelevant as neckbeards.

But nobody cares if Motorola [bgr.com] or LeEco [androidauthority.com] or whoever ELSE does it; but if Apple DARES

Maybe nobody cares because nobody noticed, and nobody noticed because nobody's even fucking heard of LeEco, and nobody pays attention to Motorola's phones anymore because they have about 1.5% of the market!? (sauce) Nah, it has got to be just that if Apple does something, anything at all, those idiot Apple-haters all contrive a reason why it's the worst thing ever, am I right? Might I instead suggest that it's because Apple has over 20% of the market share and anything they do with their phone actually matters because people (your username suggests you're one of them but who knows) buy it even if it requires sacrificing their firstborn?

Of course, now that I've posted this, the Fandroids will just start accusing Apple of copying Android (facepalm).

I need you to clarify for me, are you implying that there are idiot Fandroids just as much as there are idiot Macfags, and that idiots will be idiots? Because no disagreement there. Or do you believe that Apple never steals anything from Android or anyone else for that matter, because in that case, you already drowned on the kool-aid, so there's not much hope...

Apple's market share is 15.3% (source). The numbers in your link are local market statistics in the U.S., where Apple's phones are much more popular than elsewhere.

Facts actually say you're wrong. Android is on the upward slope; iOS is slowly dropping.

Is there a particular reason why you posted data a year old? That doesn't even show what you claim?

Facts actually say you're wrong. Android is on the upward slope; iOS is slowly dropping.

this wall:
http://www.idc.com/prodserv/sm...
should have left many year ago.

Blackberry Offers 'Unlawful Device Interception Capabilities', since the capability is entirely orthogonal to the legality. Sounds like a great selling point to... who, exactly? Those who don't see it as problematic (insert Benjamin Franklin quote here) won't care and those who do care for sure won't buy a Blackberry. Then again, Blackberry was probably running out of ways to scare away customers and needed to add a few more. They're down to 0.3%, almost there...

Actually Android has closer to 50% of the market, with iOS at about 47%, and Windows Phone at about 3%

No you are wrong, as of 2015Q2 the phone market is Android at 82.8% while IOS is 13.9% followed by MS Windows with a huge 2.6% and the rest being 0.7%.

Taken from the following URL: http://www.idc.com/prodserv/sm...

Even though the Android market is huge it is divided up between many vendors, so it should not be thought as a monopoly although I am sure the bottom dwellers would think otherwise. It would be interesting to see what the law thinks of that "Un American, Communist" Kernel called Linux which is the kernel for Android. ;-)

There's no monopoly for Apple to keep, and never has been. Apple has less than 20% of the market for smartphones which is dominated by the various Android manufacturers and isn't even the largest single player overall by many accounts (that would be Samsung), with several other major players and very long tail of also rans. I'd say the smartphone handset market is actually pretty healthy and competetive at present, the smartphone OS market not so much, but there's still a reasonable choice with nice hardware on several platforms. It's a similar situation for tablets, and in pretty much every other market they are currently in Apple is essentially an also-ran in terms of market share - definitely no monopolies.

What Apple does have though is a disproportionate amount of media coverage (both paid for advertising and articles), so perhaps that's skewing peoples perspectives?

I have a MotoX, Moto360, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and a Chromecast. In fact I have never owned a iPhone or iPad. I am not an Apple fanboy but when you look at tablets Apple has a big lead.

The actual data says otherwise. Apple has about 27% market share for tablets - the rest is pretty much Android. Yes, Apple has a larger market share for tablets than it does for phones - but it's still a very small minority share in either case.

Mobile OS statistics show apple around 15%, Android somewhere around 83% and everyone else in the last 2%. Worldwide, iOS is actually a bit player when it comes to market share.

Alice wants to buy the new Apple iPhone mobile, but it runs iOS. Her current mobile, a Samsung Galaxy S5, runs Android. She has about $100 worth of apps and games that she doesn't want to lose.

What can Alice do? She can pass on the Apple iPhone and buy the new Samsung Galaxy S6. It isn't as cool, but she'll be able to keep all her apps and games. The Apple iPhone has all those apps and games, of course, but she'll need to buy them again for the new platform, essentially adding an extra $100 to the cost of her new mobile.

Substituted with real things rather than made up ones. This is the problem, yes? So how does Mozilla's "standard app container" help Alice?

Bob wants to buy the new Apple iPhone as well. He has a Lumia running Windows Phone. Bob also has about $100 worth of apps and games.

Fortunately, for Bob, most of his apps and games were purchased from Appermart, which distributes apps using a standard package.

Whoa...let me just stop you there. Bob can't do that, because Windows Phone doesn't support "Appermart". Even if Bob were running FirefoxOS he wouldn't be able to run his apps on his new iPhone or his new Galaxy or his new Windows Phone. In fact none of the operating systems that comprise 99% of the market support apps from "Appermart". So if you're in the 99% of smartphone users that use iOS, Android or Windows Phone or want to transition from FirefoxOS to any of these platforms then this doesn't solve your problem at all.

The question you should be asking isn't "where can I buy the Samsung Galaxy S6", but "is this something that happens in real life?" The answer is a resounding "yes".

Ok but given that in real life 99% of the market has iOS, Android or Windows Phone, how does this solve the problem?

Even if developers create HTML5 apps and target iOS, Android, Windows Phone and FirefoxOS that still doesn't solve the above problem, you still can't take your FirefoxOS apps and run them on iOS, Android or Windows Phone.

You're being disingenuous now, ignoring the fact that you're probably wrong (Apple looks to have taken the crown again given latest trajectories: http://www.idc.com/prodserv/sm...) we're not talking about all phone sales, we were talking about comparative smartphone sales- i.e. Samsung's high powered models vs. Apple's high powered models, like for like you get more power with Samsung, yet Apple shifts more units.

You can't simply throw some random extra figures in the mix to try and make a point when in fact it just makes no sense. Samsung has a range of phones, but their phones that are more powerful that Apple's never outsell Apple's - the additional power you get with the Samsung phone just isn't a selling point when the phones are riddle with crappy Samsung software that ruins the Android experience and leaves the Apple experience a superior option in terms of ease and pleasantness of use.

So before screaming hypocrisy you might want to try and understand the discussion you're entering. You don't get to just reframe it by muddying the waters with figures irrelevant to the discussion just because you don't like the facts being put forward and want to disagree with the general point just because.

http://www.idc.com/prodserv/sm... They're sitting on their 10-15%. The way apple fan crowd does it is by applying "no true scotsman" fallacy to numbers to exclude as many smartphones as possible. This results in lower total smartphone shipments, meaning apple's fairly small share starts to appear much larger.

If you actually look at the Gartner report the TechCrunch is based upon you'll see TC sort of dropped the ball here. While it's true that worldwide PC sales are up 1% 4Q14 vs 4Q13, year over year sales figures show PC sales total for the year down 0.2%. What the numbers actually say is the PC market would be far worse off if it hadn't been for a slew of super cheap Windows tablets (counted by Gartner as PC sales) and laptops sold around the holidays. These sales have only come from Microsoft and Intel basically subsidizing the PC market to provide some sort of down market competition to Android and iOS tablets.

If you look at IDC's numbers covering the same time period you've got a YoY drop of 2.1% worldwide. IDC does not count things like the HP Stream 7 or the Surface Pro as a PC in their reporting. However IDC counts Chromebooks as PCs where Gartner does not.

No matter what numbers you look at the PC market is seeing declining sales worldwide. Even if you believe the Gartner growth numbers for 4Q14, they're still a full 4% lower than 4Q12. It looks even worse if you compare the numbers to 2011 or 2010.

It's not a story about traditional PCs vs tablets. The real interesting story is smart phones vs everything else. A smart phone (unlike a PC) is useful for pretty much every demographic in mature and emerging markets. They are where the future growth is going to be. That's not to say the PC is going to disappear but I doubt the market will ever see growth like 2000-2010 and likely will never see another peak like that of 2010.

Suddenly becoming one of the fastest growing programming languages in use and making several top ten lists isn't terribly impressive? Ok...

It grew quickly for a while because people actually cared about programming for Mac platforms after the iPhone became popular. It's stagnated now.

So, one of the most popular platforms on the planet (Apple is going to sell 71 million iPhones this quarter alone) isn't significant? Also when you say that it's a "tweaked Obj-C" that shows you have no idea what you're talking about.

Strawman. I didn't say Swift was insignificant, just that it wasn't "THE BIGGEST NEW LANGUAGE IN A LONG TIME". It's not.

It's moderately significant if you want to program for fruity platforms, although you should probably use Obj-C. It is insignificant otherwise.

And it is a tweaked Obj-C. It takes Obj-C, cuts out pointers, and adds type inference. Yawn. The biggest thing it has going for it is library compatibility with Obj-C so fruity programmers can use Cocoa/Carbon.

Wow, where to begin. First you try and poison the well by saying that yes, Apple is the world's biggest company but only because they charge money. For their "shit products" no less. However, iOS is sitting at 44% market share which is #2 only to Android at 47%. But Android is only at 47% because it's on everything from high end Samsung devices to the crappy devices you can get at the checkout line at your local grocery store.

Nice try. Not everyone uses their smartphone for web browsing: http://www.idc.com/prodserv/sm...

Your disdain is for a company whose OS is only #2 to an OS that literally built its empire on "shit products".

I don't know why you think a phone has to be "shitty" just because it costs less than a used car. Inexpensive!=shitty.

But that's not the best part. The best part is that your example of a well done programming language is C#. I love C#. I've made my living in C# for close to a decade. It's a fantastic language. It is also, like Swift, a proprietary language designed by one company for their own proprietary OS. That's your yardstick. Yes, there is an always-behind implementation by the open source community but it's also a language that's over ten years old, as opposed to Swift which is literally six months old come Monday.

I never said C# was a well-done language, just that it was more significant than Swift. To me it looks like a slightly better done clone of Java. I generally prefer C++ for non-script programming.

And dismissing Mono because it lags behind the MS implementation isn't correct. That's not the point; Mono doesn't have to have 1-for-1 feature parity to be useful. Without Mono, C# would be isolated to Windows desktop/server development. Which is still a more significant area than writing 2D cartoon games for iOS, but still.

Again, this is a new, modern programming language introduced by the biggest company on earth for one of the biggest platforms on the planet and the uptake on it is unprecedented. C# didn't experience uptake this quickly because Microsoft had to explain what .NET was. Java didn't grow this fast because people thought it was used to make flashing thingies on websites. Swift has the advantage of a mature Internet age (the official guide is an eBook, not even a printed book, which Apple can patch as need be) and it's being unleashed onto a developer community starving for a better language.

lol "THE BIGGEST COMPANY ON EARTH". I already told you that was a silly thing to say. Once again, market cap doesn't equal relevance for programmers. Or relevance for anyone or anything else except potential investors, really. Do you think the Apache web server is irrelevant because it's developed by a nonprofit foundation?

It doesn't

Apple had less than 12% market share in 2Q2014 This is in the smartphone market. They of course have even less in the total cell phone market. They usually get higher numbers right after they release a new phone, so yes, 15% average over one year sounds about right.

Well if the idea was to start a fire he overdid it, what's left of Nokia - at least the mobile division Microsoft bought - is nothing but a smoldering, burned out husk. Despite burning all other sales to the ground Windows Phone still only has about 3% market share and meanwhile Android has covered 80%+ of the market by units and makes money by volume, Apple with their high ASP (average selling price) and margin still do good on revenue while Microsoft is even deeper in no man's land than before.

I doubt Microsoft wanted to buy Nokia, but at this point they were really in danger of losing their one and only remaining hardware partner so it was either that or flunk out of the phone market entirely. Which would pretty much kill the vision they're selling with Windows across the board on phones and tablet/laptop convertibles. That the market isn't buying it yet - and IMHO never - is one thing, but it's what the stock holders are buying into and if Microsoft had to wave the white flag the stock price would tank.

I don't think Microsoft will do well as a hardware company and I don't really understand where all the synergy is supposed to come from, true they have the XBone division but apart from die shrinks they offer a new model maybe twice a decade. If they don't stay on top of all the latest screen, CPU, GPU, broadband, wireless, GPS, camera, sensor, SoC technology and so on then outdated phones don't sell worth shit. And the software to support it is also all mobile specific, what's left to chop?

It'll be way too expensive to have a build your own phone.

Right now. Prices will go down assuming there is mass adoption. Remember than personal computers used to sell for 4 digit numbers in the past.

And it's not what the majority of consumers want.

I don't agree. A lot of users seem to value customization and personalization. Just look at how huge is the market for phone casings, icon packs, wallpapers, custom ringtones...

Apple has proven this time and time again... They've built the largest computer (mostly mobile) empire on hardware that is idiot proof and has no options. This is what consumers want.

You do realise that Apple users are in no way, shape or form representative of the majority of phone users. According to this report from IDC which is the most current I could find, Android took 78.1% of the 4Q 2013 market share compared to iOS' 17.6%. It seems safe to conclude that most if not all of these users chose to pick up Android phones over the iPhone precisely because they were dissatisfied with some aspect of Apple's product, i.e. it was not what they wanted.

Also, one often cited reason for users switching from iPhone to Android is the lack of customisation options and/or lockdown of the devices and of the platform.

I don't like ios and most likely will never upgrade since I do not like their new models.

A somewhat ironic comment since your opinion is that Apple apparently knows what consumers want... with you being the exception?

...all except for that pesky near 90% desktop market share

The desktop market that declined 10% last year, a trend that is expected to continue?

Macs were the anomaly in all this - their "PC" sales went up 26% over the same time period.

Ultimate source is Gartner, but found the info here: linky

Just to be contrary, IDC released their own report, which has 4th quarter US shipments down only 1.5% overall, and Apple's down 5.7%. They have Lenovo growing 10% for the same period (vs Gartner's +3.5%), and have them as the only one with positive growth worldwide year on year.

IDC PC shipments press release

And most people know that most of that slump is due to Apple selling iPads.

Hilariously...and I do mean this Hilariously especially as you have quotes the Apples earnings. iPAD sales have dropped over the last few quarters with *cough* inventory shenanigans, and in the latest results http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q4fy13datasum.pdf show sales down sequentially and flat year on year. In a market *exploding*...here are IDC's figures http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24253413 to show how far Apple is falling behind the rest of the market with its market share *plummeting* from 60% to 30% Market Share.

It just shows you most people don't know.

Or could iPad sales drop because well, people are waiting for the new model?

Apple's sales are VERY cyclical. Basically, there's an extremely strong spike in sales near release (oh wait, last quarter didn't bring in new iPads people were waiting for). Given the new iPads were just announced last week in time for the holiday season, you can expect a very robust quarter this time around because people waited.

I don't particularly like the strategy, but Apple is highly predictable. I can say you'll see brand new iPads holiday season 2014, new iPhones just after Back to School, etc.

Hell, you can say the Galaxy S4 outsold the iPhone 5S the first 6 months of the year!

And most people know that most of that slump is due to Apple selling iPads.

Hilariously...and I do mean this Hilariously especially as you have quotes the Apples earnings. iPAD sales have dropped over the last few quarters with *cough* inventory shenanigans, and in the latest results http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q4fy13datasum.pdf show sales down sequentially and flat year on year. In a market *exploding*...here are IDC's figures http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24253413 to show how far Apple is falling behind the rest of the market with its market share *plummeting* from 60% to 30% Market Share.

It just shows you most people don't know.

iPad is the one to beat, this does not do it.

Do you not keep up with current events. the iPad is the looser tablet. Its market share has plummeted from 60% of sales last year to 32% http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24253413 . Ironically Microsoft could have been in this position if...well lots of ifs really... not trying to be Apple would have been one of them. Perhaps you should Google sometime...you can get it even on the iPad ;)

You really think anybody cares about that overflow of cheap Chinese Android tablets. Get a clue.

iPad is the one to beat, this does not do it.

Do you not keep up with current events. the iPad is the looser tablet. Its market share has plummeted from 60% of sales last year to 32% http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24253413 . Ironically Microsoft could have been in this position if...well lots of ifs really... not trying to be Apple would have been one of them. Perhaps you should Google sometime...you can get it even on the iPad ;)

Dave's not clear on the concept.

His whole premise is refuted by the simple fact that Android has a market share three times that of iOS. The market has proven him wrong.

"This isn't an iPad 2" and "This isn't an iPad 2 pro".

The iPad Market share of tablets is shrinking (down to 30%), they actual sell less than last year. Android are now dominant in tablets.

Current share from IDC http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24253413

If there is a meme that needs to die about Nokia is this absurd notion that Windows Phones are somehow not competing with the Android phones.

Can I have some of what you're smoking? Ballmer himself says that Windows' share of the phone OS market is "miniscule". Yeah, they're "competing" like I'd be "competing" with Magic Johnson in a game of one on one basketball. If you want a baseball analogy, in the phone market, Android is the Cardinals, iPhone is the Pirates, and Windows is the cubs (who haven't won the World Series since 1908).

Windows phone share: 3.7%. You call that competing? In a baseball game between the Cubs and Cardinals, the score is 79 to 4. And that's not even a good citation, I just plucked it from Google. They're showing Linux at .8% when Android phones ARE Linux phones.

yeah so dominate I get 3 customers in my no-Apple-product store walking out to go up to Best Buy for an iPad to every one who comes in for a 99 dollar Asus tablet.

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24253413 as you can see your figures are different from those in the real world where apples sales are down YonY 15% when the Market grew 60%. Samsung actually sold 4X the tablets of Asus (Samsung growing 280% and Asus growing 120%).

Again iPads Sales Down; Market Share Down in a growing market. I assume you stack shelves.

Will you shoot yourself when (not if) Apple's marketshare goes up again?

Apple's tiny 13%? Who is the leader? It's not like someone has 60% and Apple has "only" 13%.

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24257413 is the screen too small to search properly. For your information Android has 80% with Samsung being double Apple.