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Comment by cageface | Hacker News Reader

The only market in which Apple enjoys a healthy phone market share now is the U.S. and I strongly suspect that is largely a product of the carrier subsidy model. If people had to pay the full price of a phone upfront I'm sure a lot of iPhone buyers would opt for cheaper alternatives. Any company that's growing should post "record-breaking" earnings every quarter.

Luckily for Apple the U.S. market is also by far the most lucrative, at least for now.

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Australia is a market where Apple holds a healthy phone market share and has both subsidised and unsubsidised iPhones available. Anecdotally, people who can afford get it outright and those that can't take the 2 year carrier contract.

Even there Android has overtaken iOS from next to nothing in just two years: http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/android-overta...

Remove the subsidies and I think you'd see an even greater tilt to Android.

And "triple digits" growth in China. And premium resselers going from 200 to 400 in China. And 2.5x increase of iPhone points of sales.

And, as of last month, in 6th place behind Huwei:

http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+Falls+to+6th+Place+in+Chinas+...

But really it's the Apple apologists that keep saying nothing is wrong that are doing the most harm. If you care about Apple then you should be doing what you can to help put a boot up their backside.

You purposefully chose a link from Dec. 5th, way before earnings and when everyone was speculating on AAPL numbers. Choose any of the articles about AAPL and China after 1/23, like say this one, and things aren't as bad as you keep trying to make them:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732353980457826...

Your posts were erroneous, so people corrected you. That doesn't make them apologists.

The iPhone has a huge portion of the Japanese market. Just glancing around the train right now I see about 75% iPhones.

I think that Apple could reduce iPhone pricing to close to iPod Touch pricing if they wanted to. My suspicion is that the high price of unlocked iPhones is a concession to carriers.

I'm sorry, but almost everything you wrote is wrong.

Take Europe. The ratio of Android:iPhone may be higher in Europe than in the US, but it's still a MASSIVE share. And people are still extremely defensive if they've got anything but an iPhone here in the UK.

The European models also have carrier subsidy on ALL monthly contract phones, not just iPhones. Generally only poor people have pay-as-you-go.

It's not as if there aren't regular articles on here about the ratios of iPhones to Androids in all markets.

It's slightly confusing that you could believe any of what you wrote.

BTW, you're also wrong about any company that's growing should post "record-breaking" earnings. Earning are profits. Growing companies often post losses. It's not turnover.

It's worth noting that carrier subsidy system in the USA seem to be much sillier than you get elsewhere. It's a fair hypothesis that this is part of the reason Apple does better there. (Though of course, historically they were always much bigger in the US on desktop as well)

Luckily for us actual facts exist instead of baseless opinions.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/22/kantar-iphones-top-seller-i...

I wouldn't call the US their only healthy market.

Ok two markets, U.S. and Japan. From the same article:

In markets where Android is leading, it is consolidating its lead, accounting for over half of all smartphone sales in the 12 weeks ending December 23.

Doesn't sound like something Apple fans should be cheering about to me. Personally I'm not anti-Apple. I'd just like to see them get back to making interesting new stuff instead of polishing what they already have and suing everybody.

I've seen the exact opposite iOS vs Android numbers for Japan though I have no theory on why there is the discrepancy. And it's worth noting that the fancy phones a lot of people have in Japan don't count as "smartphones" so only 25% of people have "smartphones" vs 40-50-60% of the market in other nations, in other words there's more scope for these numbers to change (in either direction), assuming the Japanese move to "smartphones" en masse.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57497144-94/android-apple-t...

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