> "We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution" - Tim Cook

This applies to literally every single company that "just earns the same money doing nothing, or very little".

> Apple executives worried that the iPod would lose market share once cellphone manufacturers figured out how to put MP3 players on their phones.

Again, this applies to every single company in the same space

And yet somehow Apple spent those billions of dollars on R&D and others didn't. And on hardware side they keep doing it while the rest of the industry sort of just watches, doing nothing.

As an example: Samsung is entirely dependent on Google for software and on Qualcomm for chips. Unlike Apple, their entire product lines are literally under continuous existensial threat from multiple sides. Tell me, what exactly have they done to fix that?

Whereas Apple, the richest company in the world, either takes risks introducing completely new categories of products (new for them as a company) and wiping the floor with competition (see Apple Watch, 40% market share with Samsung a distant 10%), or managing seamless CPU transition for a two-decade old OS while again wiping the floor with the competition (see the entire M1 saga of the past few years).