Without profits the company doesn't exist; their market share doesn't exist; their ability to provide support for their phones doesn't exist; their ability to update / fix / improve their software doesn't exist; their ability to invest into the expensive infrastructure necessary to provide high quality app markets doesn't exist; their ability to market their phones to drive adoption doesn't exist; and on and on.

Profits matter for consumers as much as market share does, even if they don't realize it. The phone hardware business is a very expensive and difficult market. Companies like HTC demonstrate just how hard it is to stay in the game, and just how expensive it is. Being profitable is a requirement to produce at the massive economies of scale necessary to compete in the smart phone market (or you have to sell less units while charging a lot more for them, but you still require that profit to keep churning out new phones). The only reason Blackberry, for example, still exists at all is that they were so profitable for so many years, and able to build up a cash hoard; without that, they'd already have disappeared.

>Profits matter to the company. Not to you or me.

Absolutely. I wasn't trying to say that profits matter to consumers (Indirectly it may effect them though, because more profits means more freedom for a company to try new things without being too worried about wasting money).

>On the other hand, market share does affect consumers. The more popular your particular device is, the better it is for you.

I agree, but I don't think it matters all that much. Just look at the current situation. Can you honestly say that Windows' ecosystem is better than Mac's, despite the indisputable market share of Windows? Same goes with Android vs iOS (although they're pretty close). An argument could be made that Microsoft only makes the software while Apple does both software and hardware, but Mac support, ecosystem, app quality is miles ahead of Windows, in my opinion.

This depends entirely on which particular app domain matters to you. If business software or games are your priority then Windows is a no-brainer first choice. For a lot of other things it's a tossup and for some domains like music creation software the Mac is arguably better.

Yeah, it's like choosing which Linux distro is the best.

My point was that market share doesn't exactly translate into better services, better app quality etc. It is certainly a factor though, no point in denying that.

When you're buying a device in which the OS and ecosystem are developed and maintained by the same company, that company being profitable and its business sustainable is a vital customer concern. If you buy an android phone and the vendor goes bust, no big deal. If you buy an iPhone and apple goes bust, bye bye iTunes, iOS updates, App Store, etc, etc. I say this as an apple customer and iPhone user. I think a lot of the discussion on this thread is just silly, but Apple being a strong going concern is a big deal to all iPhone and Mac users.