Apple Forges Agreement With China Mobile 79
Forbes is one of several news sources reporting that Apple and China Mobile have agreed on a plan that will bring the option of iPhones to tens of millions of customers of the Chinese carrier. A separate article contains something that may be at least as interesting as the deal itself, and that's some speculation on what sort of network China Mobile will be using for all those iDevices.
Re:Apple in China (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Peak Apple 2012 (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't need to fight an attrition battle for market share - they just need to keep enough high-end users so that their platform remains the preferred launch point for developers. They don't need the most users - they need the most users who actually purchase apps.
So long as they can keep that position, they have no incentive to drop margins.
Re:Peak Apple 2012 (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple desperately needs to stay relevant with its continues to drop behind in market share worldwide...
Apple continues to grow their sales and Apple continues to pull in more profit than any other manufacturer (and only one other manufacturer is even close - all others are MILES AND MILES behind). Despite their market share being watered down due to cheap, inferior, "smartphones" that are really just feature phones running Android. I mean, really, for anyone using a top end smartphone, would you ever use, as your regular phone, one of the cheap options that are out there watering down the market share numbers? Do you seriously even vaguely put them in the same category as an iPhone or Galaxy S4 or HTC One?
I don't think Apple really cares about losing the bottom end of the market to subpar phones and I find it immensely amusing that people still think their loss of market share despite increasing sales is of any concern to them. If you think Apple cares about losing to a market in which they aren't even competing, then you're not paying attention.
Or, to put it in a car analogy so people understand, do you think that BMW and Audi care about $15k and less cars being sold? Protip: No. No they do not.