No I'm not shooting from the hip, my opinions are rational and well informed. I've been doing this for a long time, it's part of what I do for a living.

The profit machine does not hold if you lose market share.

There are penalties in economics for falling below lines in market share, and they accelerate destructively the lower you go. It's not a linear calculation, it's a compounding one.

Apple can't negotiate the same way with telecom companies for the hyper rich subsidies if they're not as relevant in the market. They can't negotiate as tremendous of supplier deals if they aren't selling as many units. They can't keep developer interest if the scale isn't high enough. Their music network loses its moat effect if they're not the #1 music platform because Android overtakes it via streaming services or otherwise.

I could list one or two dozen other powerful follow-on effects to Apple losing market share in smart phones. It's a very costly situation indeed.