Apple is falling behind in several areas. What’s funny, in the few areas they have a lead it only lasts a few months. Certainly not enough to command much of a premium price.
15% of all smartphone shipments, but 94% of all smartphone profit. And that’s up from 85% a year ago. You are right...they do not command a premium price and consumers are obviously not willing to pay the price. Yuck!
Do tell. . . The iPhones have been the fastest according to the benchmarks for the last two years. That's quite a bit more than "only a few months." Also, Android is only now catching up to having 64 bit processors with full 64 bit native apps, which Apple pioneered with the iPhone 5, four years ago on the iPhone 5. . . and the Apple 64 bit processors are on their third generation. Again, that's quite a bit longer than "only a few months." Then no one has anything at all approaching the integrated Apple ecosystem which is what really commands the premium pricing across all devices, sharing data transparently and instantly. That has been working for the last five years, at least, and no one has come up with anything even close to Apple's ecosystem. . . far more than "only a few months."
Apple has had the iTouch fingerprint sensor now for three years. No other competitor has found a system as secure that works consistently. . . and is as secure. Apple also has the built-in-to the processor Secure Element chip which cannot be accessed from outside the processor where the password hash and encryption key hash are securely kept, so that even Apple cannot get at them. Again no one has been able to duplicate anything close to those in over three years. . . far longer than "only a few months."
Every single other mobile device system aside from Apple iOS has professional law enforcement tools available from The Hacker Team to break into them. Only Apple iOS devices do not have such tools available for the authorities to get into them to search for anything they want. Only jailbroken Apple iPhones and iPads can be broken into by anyone. That has been the case since iOS 8.0 came out. . . and that has been two years. More than "only a few months."
Apple iOS devices are pretty much immune to remote attack from malware. . . instead of the mess that Android is with its over 3 million malware known to be in the wild. . . including some that literally cannot be removed once the device has been infected. Apple iOS devices have been lead in that state for FAR more than "only a few months," and that is worth a high premium in peace of mind.
The few instances where there have been some incursions into iOS have occurred in China, where users, of their own volition, download malicious apps from third party app stores and side-load them onto their devices as if they were Enterprise Apps, using either stolen or borrowed Enterprise Security Certificates. . . and have not been found in the US.
One area where Android leads by leaps and bounds is fragmentation. . . and Apple iOS is pleased to let them.
The reality of the open market is that Apple iPhones DO INDEED command the prices they get, because willing buyers PAY those prices and even clamor to do so. They do not clamor to pay the prices for your preferred platform, so much that when Samsung tried to get premium prices for the Samsung Galaxy 6S and Edge in April of 2015, they had to rapidly and drastically drop the original asking price of $849 and $1179, respectively, to even move their inventory just months after introduction. . . and even that was not enough to make them competitive. Samsung has finally turned things around and is making a quarterly profit for the first time in eight quarters. . . because their electronics division is selling large numbers of chips to APPLE for incorporation in iPhones. . . and they are making 11% of the smartphone market's profits, compared to Apple's 94%.