Which is stupid, and particularly so in the case of the competing platforms market of this, where even if a strategy ends up being long-term bad for Google, if it lures people into Android and away from iPhone, there are barriers to switching back, and Google's hypothetical loss is more likely to be Samsung's gain than Apple's.
But this is all by design. The profit-share metric -- a metric that you never, ever, ever heard about before iPhone became a highly profitable phone with a low market share -- is a vanity metric that's made precisely to make a low market share/high profitability phone look good. The flaws of the metric are baked into it.
Apple's profits are amazing for them. Their market-share is not great, and their percentage of industry revenue is not great. Trying to hide the latter fact by using one metric to report both of those things is stupid.
Having money means you can continue to keep up with the investments in technology needed to stay relevant in the mobile phone business.
And the reason people keep bringing up the profit share metric is because companies like HTC, Sony, LG were running at losses for so many years that it put in jeopardy their continued presence in the mobile phone market. And nobody wants to buy a phone that isn't supported in a year or two.
Huawei and Apple have roughly equal marketshare. If "nobody wants" to buy a phone from an unprofitable manufacturer, how come that's true?
