If Apple weren't constantly trying to increase their market share, I imagine their shareholders would like to have a word with them :-)
I get what you're saying though. I don't think they should go after the budget PC market. There's still lots of room for growth at the mid to high end. There's also servers.
The goal for the investors isn't to increase market share though, it's to increase profit. I'm questioning the assumption that market share and profit are directly, and linearly, related. The average smartphone price worldwide is around $300 [1]. I don't have access to the full report at that link, but with the graphs shown, some significant portion must be below that price. My naive assumption is that market share in the top end is the most important, with a movement into the lower end eventually leading to the destruction of the perception of quality that they seem to work hard for, and operating costs that would cut into profits. \shrug\
>The goal for the investors isn't to increase market share though, it's to increase profit.
Right, but since the wholesale cost of their phones isn't likely to change much at this point, increasing marketshare is the most obvious path to increased profit. Also, with Apple increasingly focused on services revenue, getting more customers into its ecosystem makes perfect sense.
I agree they likely won't go after the low end. This site [0] claims Apple only owns 52% of the high end market so there's lots of room for growth at the mid and high end.
Anyways, since we were comparing Apple to Intel/AMD I assumed we were talking about PC's.
I get what you're saying though. I don't think they should go after the budget PC market. There's still lots of room for growth at the mid to high end. There's also servers.