apple has a differentiation strategy, which explicitly goes after fatter profits rather than volume. the handset market is so large however, that apple can still have plenty of volume (100 million units/year) to drive down cost with economies of scale.
Yes. It has been like that since the day iPhone was launched. Arguably the whole (modern) Smartphone Market history.
So I am kinda surprised to see some of the reaction here. And it was easy in the old days when iPhone was in Financial Segment with ASP and unit volume. Now it is hard to judge without those Data. And no where on the site do they mention how they calculated the profits.
Also worth mentioning Apple used to make 95%+ if not more than 100% profits because other vendors were losing money.
Edit: here it is
https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/11/04/apple-gra...
Because people are starting to wake up to the idea that simply defining the market as "Mobile Handsets" for Anti-Trust purposes is flawed.
The only way a company can achieve this level of profitability is by excluding competition from their market, The idea that apple "Competes" with other Handset manufacturers is clearly flawed, as these statics show.
Apple is a monopoly and should be treated as such, to the point they should be required to open up their ecosystem to competition