I agree. It's interesting info to know, but not something to get worked up about. MG Siegler seems to take pride in Apple making a lot of money, for example. I'm really unclear why I should get excited if Apple make $30B this year or $25B unless I'm a shareholder.
Well heck, I am an Apple shareholder, but still don't particularly care whether Apple happens to sell more phones than any other individual company, as long as they're still selling plenty of phones and making plenty of money.
I mean, I'd prefer 'em to be making more money rather than less money, but it's not a great idea to get too emotionally invested in every piece of news about every company you happen to have some money in.
I guess this is just a way of confirming your choice with so many out there. This is similar to the Google+ and Facebook buzz that was there a some time ago.
Also, people want their favorite companies to be pitted against their closest competitor and when they emerge victorious, they have a sense of pride about it.
To end, this is very similar to the emacs vs vim or windows vs linux vs mac or the browser competition where people just want to establish their some kind of superiority over the others.