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Comment by kemper | Hacker News Reader

I think your response is a bit short-sighted. Look at market share as an indicator, not a means to an end. Apple might not care that its market share is 10% or 70%, but it does care that it just launched a new smartphone and sales are slowing while its rivals are picking up steam.

If you want to believe that it's a coincidence that Apple is hitting its competitors the hardest in two countries where it seems to be losing the most ground, that's fine. Others might not share your opinion though. Germany and France are key markets — remember, the 4S launched in each of those countries at the same time as in the US.

Don't focus on market share, focus on what it might tell us.

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> "but it does care that it just launched a new smartphone and sales are slowing while its rivals are picking up steam."

Again, Apple's sales may not be slowing in those regions. They could be enjoying fairly large year-over-year sales increases and still be losing share if the overall smartphone market is growing faster than they are and others (Android) are capturing most of that growth. We simply do not know. What we also do not know is: what kind of profit those other phones are generating and who they're selling to. If they're glorified feature-phones with razor-thin margins (as is often the case in other regions with explosive android growth) every indication is that Apple simply would not care about that market any more than they care about the lower-margin segments of the markets for laptops, desktops, media players, tablets, etc.

So, yes, market share could be part of an interesting larger story. But we have absolutely nothing to give context or larger meaning to the market share number. So the number itself is simply useless. Particularly as justification for some assertion that based on that number alone Apple is going to change its long-standing and very-profitable approach.

Why would Apple care about profits or margins its rivals are achieving? What matters is what Reuters is suggesting: For whatever reason (they suggest pricing/economy) people are buying not-iPhones instead of iPhones in what appears to be an increasing number of cases. Market share is an indication of that. Apple may not care about market share as a metric per say, but the company absolutely cares about people buying not-iPhones instead of iPhones. This, of course, is why they're suing every single one of their biggest competitors to begin with.

> "Why would Apple care about profits or margins its rivals are achieving?"

Because not all smartphones are in the same market segment.

If competitors are selling expensive phones, it's relevant to Apple's interests. It means they're legitimately getting beaten in the segment they're actively targeting. (The subsidized/$400+ segment)

But if competitors are selling cheap phones, then those sales don't represent any sort of loss to Apple as those customers were probably not going to spend 400+ on a phone and Apple has no (apparent) designs on the low-margin market. They would seemingly rather cede the $200 phone segment entirely than compete in it.

And whether those $200 phones are running Symbian or Android or whatever else is largely irrelevant to Apple.

And again, this is not unlike the way they've ceded the low-margin segment in every other market they compete in.

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