Talk of 'winning' or 'losing' is foolish - this isn't a game with pre-set victory conditions.
Apple, a single device manufacturer, will inevitably not sell as many units as the combined Android device manufacturers. It's like comparing the output of Smart to the output of Ford.
Apple don't need - and never had, anyway - a majority market share in order to turn a significant profit on selling devices. (And they are turning a significant profit - a quick Google shows Apple were reporting quarterly profits up 70% a couple of months ago.)
I actually don't look at this through the narrow lens of an Apple shareholder. Who wins--iphone or android--matters a great deal for the future of the smartphone ecosystem. I have no doubt that Apple can turn a nice profit while controlling 5-10% market share just like in the PC market.
To me though, that doesn't matter. What matters is that the dominant smartphone platform will be available on many devices from many carriers and will be reasonably open.
Talking about 'winning' or 'losing' is STILL foolish, even from the broader viewpoint.
No one product will win. Some products will fail. This is as true for smartphones as it is for games consoles, cars, and soft drinks.
People do this all the time, and it's so needlessly divisive and tribalist. When the current generation of games consoles came out (as with every generation before) there was raging debates over which one would 'win' - and look, they're all selling, all have games, and all are popular. Sometimes an individual product or company will fail (Sega, in the games console market), but you very rarely really see a single dominant 'winner'.
Windows was a clear dominant 'winner' for a long time. Still is, even though it's becoming less relevant.
I agree that identifying with a side or a company is usually counter-productive, but having a strong preference for a specific technology to 'win' for practical or ideological reasons seems fair.
Market share determines what platforms people choose to develop for. "Winning" and "losing" is why I don't recommend the Palm Pre to anyone. It matters, and all other things being equal, I want to own a phone that runs the "winning" platform.
I propose that you don't get 'winning' platforms, just 'losing' ones. (Windows aside, that is - I think that's an anomaly that hasn't been and won't be repeated.)
Arguing for any particular platform 'to lose', if it's not clearly already lost, is just baiting. Arguing for a platform 'to win', when it's already shown that it's not lost, is about the same.
Advising avoiding a platform that's lost is a different matter - I wouldn't recommend the Palm Pre, the Sega Dreamcast, or the Atari ST.
You have pretty much all of the pro-Apple talking points covered in your various posts in this discussion. I urge you not to simply accept them because you read them elsewhere, however, because they're largely baseless.
That's a slightly better attempt at dismissing what I've said than going 'stupid Apple fanboi', but it amounts to the same thing.
Do you honestly think the idea that there will be no single 'winner' or 'loser' in the smartphone market is baseless? What brings you to this conclusion?
If you're thinking in terms of the desktop PC market, where Windows is the clear winner, that's an anomaly and I don't think you're going to see it repeated in any consumer device market.
But if you've sound reasoning for why anything I've said is incorrect, please let me know. I'm not a blind Apple fanboi, and I don't think that Apple's devices are automatically the best choice. (After an increasingly frustrating experience with my iPhone, I'm living with it only long enough for Nokia to start releasing MeeGo devices.)
I don't read any of those sites, except occasionally when linked from HN.
The closest I come is sometimes catching up on macrumors when I'm bored.
What you're seeing in my comments is not mindless repetition of someone else's talking point, it's my own opinion derived from my experience with both Apple and the mobile phone industry.
That aside, I'm not sure I've really said anything 'pro-Apple' at all. What I said was that this isn't anything new and that Apple's behaviour makes sense given their business model. I've also dismissed the idea that Apple ever had a majority of the market (surely that would be ANTI-Apple, to so much as imply that other people might also make decent phones!) and tried to argue against mindless polarisation.
If you want to talk about something that's influenced by American politics, talk about people who believe that everything is split down into distinct 'winners' and 'losers' with no subtlety at all. From my limited exposure to American politics (The Daily Show, our reporting of your news, and American friends (mostly left-wing) and family (mostly right-wing)) that 'us or them' seems to be perhaps the defining feature of American politics right now.
But now I'm really digressing.
[Edit: my comment might look a little random now. Originally the comment I was replying to had references to pro-Mac bloggers and implied that I was simply repeating their ideas in an 'echo chamber' effect, and compared it to political discourse being led the same way.]
Everyone should pay attention because this is an almost textbook case of a disguised "begging the question."
We shouldn't listen to the points the OP made because he read them elsewhere and they are largely baseless. Why are they largely baseless? Because he read them elsewhere and they are largely baseless.
The conclusion is assumed in the argument itself therefore the "argument" really isn't an argument at all.
The points the OP makes are the same points that are repeated again on every god damn story relating to Android or Apple, They aren't baseless, and probably had merit the first hundred thousand times they were argued over, however at this point they're just boring. Every single discussion on global warming or left versus right or socialized health care is overwhelmingly dominated by the same rote repetition, and it's unfortunate when that tactic infects technology discussions.
It's just noise. It's people trying to toss in the standard grenades to attempt to get some sort of points for their team.
Talking point "debates" could be had by robots. They're just noise on the web.
Apple, a single device manufacturer, will inevitably not sell as many units as the combined Android device manufacturers. It's like comparing the output of Smart to the output of Ford.
Apple don't need - and never had, anyway - a majority market share in order to turn a significant profit on selling devices. (And they are turning a significant profit - a quick Google shows Apple were reporting quarterly profits up 70% a couple of months ago.)