“Last week, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said something most observers seem to have ignored,” Sam Mattera writes for The Motley Fool. “While investors honed in on Apple’s stock buyback, far more interesting was Cook’s comments regarding Apple’s share of the mobile market, and its ongoing competition with Google and Microsoft.”
“Apple’s critics, including myself, have argued that Apple’s declining market share would eventually put its iPhone business in jeopardy, as its platform would slowly lose its appeal to developers,” Mattera writes. “The general consensus seems to be that Apple simply doesn’t care about its declining market share — that the company was content to let its iPhone become a niche product, preferring to defend its margins at the expense of its market share. Not so, according to Cook. From The Wall Street Journal:”
In most geographies, in most major regions of the world, we’re one or two [in terms of smartphone market share]. Would I like to be one in the places where we are two? You better believe it. If there is a way we can do that without changing where our line is on a great product, then we’re going to do it. But what we’re not going to do is we’re not going to make junk. We’re not going to put Apple’s brand on something someone else designed.
I don’t view that as being satisfied with being small or however you want to define it. It’s not saying that market share is irrelevant or not important. I’ve never said that. I just always tried to say that the macro thing for us is to make a great product and we must do that.
Mattera writes, “Cook’s remarks suggest that Apple would consider offering cheaper iPhones to defend its market share if need be. Cook admits that Apple won’t make “‘junk,’ but doesn’t rule out going down-market completely.”
Read more in the full article here.