[demallien]

Apple cares about market share in two very different ways. Firstly, they care about it for the simple reason of making money on each handset sold. In that respect, those charts actually show Apple crushing every other smartphone manufacturer out there.

Secondly, they care about marketshare of the iOS platform because this is one of the determining factors in how much support a platform will get from developers. Here it could be an issue if the get swamped in volume by the Android platform. But marketshare isn't the only factor that helps developers make the choice to support a platform. Developers care about how much money they can make by developing on a given platform, and this is not determined uniquely by the marketshare. Other factors include discoverability of the developer's application by users, the demographics of the marketplace (are they users that tend to hand over money for a product, or do they prefer free stuff), and ease of development (how good is the SDK, how fragmented is the platform, how restrictive are the T&Cs of the marketplace).

In this second aspect of marketshare, Apple may end up losing out to Android overall. But firstly, that day is not yet come - when talking about platform marketshare, there are also the iPod touch and the iPad to toss into the mix, which changes the final numbers. Even when (and I do think it is a question of when) Android takes over as the leading platform, the factors outlined in the last paragraph mean that it is not an automatic given that developers will flee iOS for Android. Indeed, unless Android can claim more than 80% of the market, I would expect developers will show equal preference for supporting both platforms. We are a long way from 80% marketshare for Android, so I doubt Apple is particularly worried just at the moment.