[abstractfactory]

I don't doubt that Apple has vastly greater profits than any of its competitors, but stats like this are cooked to make the ratio seem even more impressive than it already is. The notion that a feature phone and an iPhone are substantially in the same market is silly. It's akin to categorizing ThinkPads and land line handsets as part of the same market. Of course, journalists optimize for the most dramatic headline, not the most informative or truthful article, so we're not going to see many apples-to-apples comparisons on this subject in the tech press.

Also I have a non-rhetorical question. Apple, and several of the competitors graphed here, have many lines of non-smartphone products. Is this graph tracking the profit/loss of their smartphone divisions only, or profits of the company as a whole? If the latter, then the comparison is silly, isn't it? And if it's the former, how does this analyst account for costs shared among multiple divisions, such as iOS development (which is a cost that's shared with their iPad and to some extent even their Mac divisions)?

[rayiner]

> I don't doubt that Apple has vastly greater profits than any of its competitors, but stats like this are cooked to make the ratio seem even more impressive than it already is.

The chart isn't misleading--it shows what it purports to show: the share of total profits in the cell phone market. The chart suggests that Apple has managed to capture a big %-age of the total profits in the market by targeting a high-margin niche, which is in itself a useful observation.

The chart would be misleading if it were, say, comparing profit per phone (which would for no reason make companies that sold a lot of cheap phones look worse than companies that sold fewer expensive phones) but that's not what this chart is doing.

[dasil003]

Your first paragraph is fallacious.

If the graph includes feature phones then that will necessarily dilute Apple's profits since they do not make a feature phone. Therefore that makes Apple's numbers appear less impressive.

I don't have an answer to your questions, but I'm sure Mr. Dediu would be happy to answer them transparently. He's not a journalist cooking sensational stats, he's a serious amateur analyst who tries to make revealing graphs with an intellectual honesty that is refreshing and a community-driven feedback process that is producing better punditry than most of the professionals. I know a lot of people have a chip on their shoulder about Apple, but it is possible to be both interested and impressed by Apple and also still be a rational observer.

[abstractfactory]

The headline manufactures drama from the contrast between "8.7% market share [in units sold]" and 75% of profits. This is the silly part of the coverage.

It's not Dediu's fault that Elmer-Dewitt at CNN Money chose to be ridiculous, so your defense of Dediu's integrity is beside the point.

[rimantas]

  > This is the silly part of the coverage.

Can you explain what's so silly about it? It's a fact, and fascinating one, I'd say.