Ah, but see how easy it is to pick and choose data when there is no official source in the first place.
Let me boil this down. You are the one claiming Apple holds worldwide marketshare in high end phones. Show me the data. Simple as that. I've never seen such a report because Apple doesn't report sales by model, just by product category. So I go by product category because that is what is official. For that there is data and it clearly shows Apple/iOS does not lead in worldwide phone sales.
Honestly, I don't know why marketshare rankles you so & why you seem to take it so personally. It certainly is a non-issue to Apple, who ignores the metric and also doesn't want people to focus on model x sales vs model y. It's not relevant to Apple profits or my observation. Case in point: The iPhone SE, not the iPhone flagship model, looks like it might be carrying Apple to a respectable quarter. It's far more popular than Apple forecasted. Great for Apple. Unlikely to move the marketshare needle as most of the sales were by existing iPhone users who resisted moving to a bigger phone footprint.
I was merely pointing out that there seems to be a disconnect between consumer's love for Apple and it being the go-to brand world wide in any major product category -- not model, major product category. And you twisted it into some sort of goulash. Apple is clearly influential, yes, but not dominant in any sales category for which there is official data. The numbers make no doubt Android is far more popular. And, it would seem, anecdotally, not just because there are less expensive phones on that OS. I see a lot more Android devices in the wealthiest cities in Europe like London, Berlin, Paris than iPhones. Quite the opposite from, say, DC or NYC where it iPhones are far more common. Same goes for Macs, which are littered in U.S. airport waiting areas. Not so much elsewhere in the world.
Your original post stated this:
Odd how Apple is always ranked high on these lists yet it doesn't have anything close to worldwide marketshare in any single major product category
My claim was this:
They are the market leader in flagship smartphones.
Your claim is 100% false, while my claim is 100% right. I'm not upset at anything since I'm simply dealing with facts. Facts you seem to want to ignore so you don't have to admit you're wrong. I already showed you REAL data provided by none other than Samsung themselves. All you've provided are useless reports from analysts and cherry picked numbers to support your incorrect position.
You keep asking for numbers and I already provided you with the most important one that exists. That is, when Samsung announced they sold 200 million Galaxy S smartphones (flagships). This is a very important number, because MOST phones Samsung sells are low end junk. At the time this figure was announced Samsung had actually sold almost 1 billion smartphones. Right away this tells us that the majority of phones Samsung sells are low-end devices, and only a small portion of them are flagships.
This can also be confirmed by the low ASP of Samsung devices (which has hovered around $220-250 for years now). Let's say Samsung sells one flagship for $500. They also sell two cheap phones at $50 each. That's a grand total of $600 for three devices. That gives us an ASP of $200. If Samsung sold one device at $500 and two devices at $100 that gives us an ASP of $233. You can try any combination you like, but it's a fact that flagships make up less than 1/3rd of Samsung sales.
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20160707000313&RURL=#jyk
This is the only estimate we have for Galaxy S7 sales, since Samsung are cowards and no longer tell us flagship sales numbers (the Galaxy S4 was the last device Samsung ever announced numbers for). This figure of 26 million is also around 1/3 of their total smartphone sales, which also aligns with their ASP.
Now let's look at Apple. Right off the bat, Apple only sells flagships. There are no $50 or $100 iPhones for sale anywhere. About as cheap as you'll find is the iPhone SE for $399. The more important number for Apple is their ASP, which has consistently been in the mid to high $600 range. The holiday quarter, right after the 6S launched, their ASP rose to $690. This recent quarter (where they had their first ever decline in history) the ASP had dropped to $642 (last year it was $659). It's important to note that this ASP ALSO includes sales of older iPhones (like the 5S or 6). Which also pretty much stamps out the theory people have that most iPhone sales are older models at lower prices, or models like the 5 or 4S (which were recently still being sold in 3rd world countries). This is simply not possible, or their ASP would reflect it.
BOTTOM LINE: Most iPhone sales are the newer models and they are all flagships. Most Samsung phone sales are low-end junk, and only a small portion of them (less than 1/3) are flagships. Since Samsung is widely regarded as the #1 Android smartphone seller (trouncing companies like HTC, LG, Motorola and others), and since Apple sells more than 2X as many flagships as Samsung, then Apple is clearly the market leader in flagships.