Originally Posted by Quackers:
“Apples share might be getting smaller as the market is flooded with junk cheap end phones and tablets, but that market is now bigger than it was. They are still shipping millions and millions of devices. I ordered a 5S as an upgrade a week ago and EE told me they did not have any stock so people are after them.
You can play with stats, for example lets say the market was 1 million smart phones and apple had 25% market share (250,000 mobiles sold), then the market booms flooded with loads of android handsets to 10 million smart phones sold and apples market share drops to 20% (2,000,000 mobiles sold), but wait they have lost 5% market share surly it must be doom and gloom for apple? Erm no.”
Sorry but that analogy has no relevance to the real market events of the past few years. It's pointless dreaming up hypothetical figures if they do not even remotely correlate to the reality of the situation.
Apple in 2007 had close to 90% of the mobile market with no competition. Everyone was pretty much dazed by the iPhone and had no idea how to react. Microsoft and Nokia rubbished it, while others sought to compete, Google included.
The iPhone ruled the market near unimpeded, all the way through to 2010, with its variants becoming some of the world's best selling smartphones.
It was Apple's arrogance arising from the iPhone's monumental success that allowed Android to take-off in the first place. Had the Verizon and Sprint iPhones in the US and availability on T-Mobile, Orange and Vodafone in the UK come sooner, it could have been a very very different story today.
The market has indeed been expanding, but Apple's sales have not. One only has to look at the launch figures to see a marked pattern. The sales have been falling while the market as a whole has been expanding. The iPhone 5S sold less at launch than the iPhone 5 while competitor devices such as the Galaxy S3 and S4 are starting to rival iPhone sales figures. Consumer interest in Apple is waning and it certainly isn't the pretty picture you painted it out to be.
Saying that Apple's falling market share and declining sales are disappointing is not "doom and gloom", it is realism.