Amazing considering they're less than 3 years into the iPhone's life. Just staggering.
If anyone had predicted, when the iPhone was announced, that within 3 years Apple would be making the largest profits of any phone-maker, they would have been laughed out of the room.
Same as if you said that Apple would have the largest profit share of any PC manufacturer. It's all about the margins, and now when someone says Apple's market share is marginal, we know what that word means.
Even more amazing when you consider Apple has been artificially limiting themselves to only one carrier in the US. If they had launched a CDMA & GSM iPhone at the same time I don't think it's crazy to speculate their market-share could easily be 10% higher right now.
1. By locking in with a&tt they got concessions that Verizon was not willing to grant, which must have had some effect on the phone's popularity. (Visual voice mail, no carrier mark on the phone, a very good subsidy (though, initially, no subsidy)...)
2. By only targeting GSM, they drastically simplified the engineering required for the device. The recent comments from an anonymous engineer on the Pink project made it clear that targeting both GSM and CDMA was a huge mistake for them. My understanding is that the two radios are not simply interchangeable. Building an iPhone for both would have required coming up with two radically different internal designs. This would have required engineering hours which would likely have delayed the phone. (or the 3g, or the 3gs) And that delay would naturally have cost market share.
So, it is pretty hard to say what would be different if Apple had a phone that ran on other carriers. And, it is a two way street, it sure doesn't look like Verizon plans on having the iPhone any time soon.
If anyone had predicted, when the iPhone was announced, that within 3 years Apple would be making the largest profits of any phone-maker, they would have been laughed out of the room.