Its not just the housing market its the idea of buying whatever I want and putting the rest on credit. People own iPhones that can barely pay bills. Something is wrong with that.
I hope you're not suggesting that only iPhone users are buying on credit and all Android users buy with cash.
The trouble with a profits graph is that it doesn't reflect how well they are selling, just that the company is making more money off what it does sell. Is that the same as market success? YMMV. I think a graph of units sold would be much more meaningful.
(And then weight the units sold graph versus the profits graph to see how much profit per unit they are making.....)
All of the information that you're asking about is available. In this last quarter, Apple sold 35 million iPhones. Samsung sold about 42 million.
So, here's the math.
Apple = 73% x $14.4 billion = $10.5 billion / 35 million = $300 profit per phone
Samsung = 26% x 14.4 = $3.74 bil / 42 mil = $89 profit per phone
EDIT - I just re-read your post. I didn't quite answer what you were asking. Sorry. But smartphone market share charts are availalbe all over the place.
As for your question as to whether profit share is a measure of market success ... I contend that it's a significant component of market success. A high market share is useless if you're not making money off of that market share somehow. If you can demonstrate that selling a lot of units at a low margin will somehow contribute profits elsewhere, then we can talk. Otherwise, you're just burning cash.
Case in point - it's been noted that Amazon loses money on every Fire tablet they sell. But they're business model is that they'll make up the costs by having people buy other items at Amazon. Samsung doesn't quite have that ability, so they need to make profits on the hardware ... which they do. Note that Samsung is trying to branch out to other ventures, like music streaming services. Perhaps this is in anticipation of lower hardware margins ... who knows.
Anyways, Apple is at a good spot right now. They have the highest margins in the sector, they're number 2 in units sold, and they get extra revenue/profits in software/media sales. They are well positioned in many different competition scenarios. They can afford to drop prices (reduced margins) to maintain market share if needed. They can afford one or two products to bomb. The same cannot be said of some of these other manufacturers (I'm looking at you, Nokia).
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