[PrimeMcFly]

> You don't actually need an account to use an iPhone.

Really? It's never insisted upon for any core service?

> You can also use SMS without iMessage.

But most people don't because it's the default. MS was found to have a monopoly with IE even though there were alternatives.

[joshmanders]

> But most people don't because it's the default. MS was found to have a monopoly with IE even though there were alternatives.

Windows also was the dominant operating system with a market share in the 90% or higher. iOS isn't even the market leader in the US let alone the world, so can't really be a monopoly now can it?

[dwallin]

54% of the US market makes them a pretty clear market leader. https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...

[PrimeMcFly]

> iOS isn't even the market leader in the US

How can that not be true if most people in the US use an iPhone as their phone?

[joshmanders]

iPhone and Samsung combined make up almost 80% of smart phone market share in the US. Being as Statistia is a premium thing I can't get accurate numbers, but lets say splitting 50/50 because if it was anything with any serious gap, they wouldn't group them the same. I'd assume they're high 40's and low 50's split between the two, so means iPhone is ~40%, now I ain't no math magician or anything but that leaves ~60% for non-iPhone devices.

[PrimeMcFly]

In plenty of other threads I've seen people bring up that in the US most phones are iPhones, they are the most popular choice by far. I can't remember where they sourced the info from and not about to research it myself though, at least not at the moment.

[joshmanders]

So you just believe what others say without actually looking up sources? Got it.

[erinnh]

This has Apple at over 50%:

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/us-smartphone-...

This does as well:

https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/us-smartphone-market-share

I would’ve been highly surprised if Samsung and Apple were head-to-head in the USA.

[PrimeMcFly]

No buddy. I've looked up and verified sources in the past, just not willing to do so conversing with you in this particular discussion, especially since your reasoning which was just making assumptions was not very convincing. Thankfully others have already provided better sources.

[averageRoyalty]

> Really? It's never insisted upon for any core service?

You might need to qualify "core service" here, but no. Calls, SMS, MMS, internet all work fine without an account. You need an account to download apps from the app store, but that's a different argument. If you wanted to, there are various methods to load apps up without an account too (side loading via Xcode, MDM, etc).