Apple never cared about having the most marketshare outright. It focuses on gaining marketshare on customers with the higher likelihood to give them a profit.
These are all capable devices but they have enough missing capabilities to make them sound like giant on-ramps to me. Gateway devices for people before their next upgrade.
There's a reason why the marketing strategy for smart watches pivoted so heavily to older clientele and became health-centric (Older user = deeper wallet).
They aren't targeted at the Western consumers - they are targeted at the India and ASEAN markets where they act as a gateway for customers who would previously have purchased used Apple products from resellers like Aptronix (India) or FPT Shop (Vietnam) instead of directly from Apple.
They all have one thing in common: better profit margin to their competition, better hardware/Better software/Better integration to Apple ecosystems in comparison to their, well, peers/Competition, with better performance to their competition.
I’m inclined to believe the Macrumors story because Apple did have a great cycle with the 17 and high memory prices affect brands with less pricing power more.
The reality is that you didn't really check whether the two articles are same. The one in the OP is citing Counterpoint Research. The one you linked to cites Omdia. They seem to be two different market research reports.
Apple claimed a record 20% of the market. Samsung overtook them with a 24% market share. These aren’t contradictory statements.
I suspect Apple’s percent of the profit share remains undefeated though.