“So Phil Schiller gave a second eve-of-Galaxy-S4-launch interview, this one to Reuters reporter Poornima Gupta,” John Gruber writes for Daring Fireball. “The headline (‘Apple’s Schiller Blasts Android, Samsung on Galaxy’s Eve’) is spot-on, but here’s the second paragraph: ‘The marketing chief’s rare attack on a rival, on the eve of the Galaxy S4’s global premier in New York, underscores the extent of the pressure piled upon a company that once stood the undisputed leader of the smartphone arena, but ceded its crown to Samsung in 2012.'”
“According to Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley, last year Apple took 69 percent of the handset industry’s profits; Samsung took 34. For just the last quarter, the numbers were 72 percent for Apple, 29 for Samsung. You will note that both the annual and quarterly numbers total more than 100 percent; that is because all other handset makers, combined, are losing money. This is rather astounding — Apple and Samsung have together destroyed the rest of the mobile handset industry.”
Apple “ceded its crown to Samsung in 2012.”
Gruber writes, “That’s a statement of fact, in a Reuters news (not opinion) story, about a company with 70 percent (and judging by last quarter, growing) of the industry’s profits… The desire for the ‘Oh, how the mighty Apple has fallen’ narrative is so strong that the narrative is simply being stated as fact, evidence to the contrary be damned. It’s reported as true simply because they want it to be true.”
Read more in the full article – very highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in mid-January:
“Journalism is dead – at Reuters, at the very least… If you’ve read Reuters for the last few months, you’ll have noticed a pervasive anti-Apple/pro-Samsung theme in many of their Apple-rleated articles… We’re left with only one question: When did Samsung buy Reuters?
