There's a lot of middle ground between Apple's current exceptional margins and the bottom feeders. I'm not sure why this is always cast in such black & white terms. Apple has a lot of pricing options open here that would enlarge their market share without sacrificing anything essential in performance or build quality.<p>And please let's not have any Mercedes analogies. It doesn't matter to me what car my friends drive but the network effects of mobile ecosystems are very real.
I get what he's saying but it rubs me the wrong way.<p>What he is saying is that he only wants to serve the richest 10% of the market. That's his choice. But I think it will ultimately be their demise.<p>The rest of the world needs phones too. Is an iPhone 4 class phone really so out of date that someone in India can't use it?<p>I think they could. I think it'd be orders of magnitude better than what they currently use.<p>What I think is this: He is worried that nobody would buy the 5S if there was a cheap 4 because the 4 is what 90% of us need (not want) and is at the price point that the 90% of us need it to be at.
Not sure about the context but Tim Cook's statement sounds arrogant.<p>People in 3rd-world countries use these "junk" phones to improve their lives.<p>Even here in the US, some of the poor doesn't own a PC but own a cheap Android phone.
> <i>Apple’s market share is bigger than BMW’s or Mercedes’s or Porsche’s in the automotive market. What’s wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?</i><p>That's the money quote to me.<p>For some reason everyone continues to think Apple should try to be the Toyota or Kia of the computer world, but in reality, it's perfectly acceptable to be BMW or Mercedes.
Title:<i>Apple's Cook: "We' re not in junk business"</i><p>Actual Title: Apple Chiefs Discuss Strategy, Market Share—and the New iPhones