People only believe that to be true because Asymco keeps repeating it and getting quoted widely by people like Gruber in the Apple echo-chamber (and because they desperately want it to be true).
A key diversionary tactic Asymco uses is to combine dumbphone and smartphone sales, so companies like Samsung that are transitioning customers from genuinely low-margin, low-cost, end-of-lifecycle products onto relatively much higher margin Android phones are presented as if they are not doing very well, when in fact they have two seperate business: a rapidly growing and profitable Android business, and a break-even or loss-making dumbphone business that they're winding down.
Notice how much "better" HTC is doing in his stats (despite regular doom'n'gloom predictions from him about them in the last year) because they don't have a dumbphone business.
