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Apple Chiefs Discuss Strategy, Market Share—and the New iPhones

and the New iPhones —  Apple's doomed.  —  This is what you hear and read.  Sure, it was a hell of a run—iPhone, iPad, all that—but it's about to end, and fast.  If you need any proof, just look at China: the world's largest smartphone market …

Businessweek Sam Grobart

Context & Ripple Effects

The 'Apple is doomed' chorus is loud enough that Tim Cook and Jony Ive sat for a rare joint interview with Bloomberg Businessweek just after the iPhone 5s and 5c launch, with syndication reaching USA Today, TechCrunch, BGR, AFP and others within days. The skepticism they are answering has a paper trail: a January New York Times report on talk of cheaper iPhones framed the worry that Apple was losing the price-sensitive mass market, and commentary keeps pointing at China — the world's largest smartphone market — where Apple's position is thin relative to its global standing.

Cook's sharpest line closes that loop directly: Apple 'never had an objective to sell a low-cost phone.' That reframes the 5c as a mid-tier play rather than a budget device, and it echoes an old debate — a 2007 analysis of Apple's growth already flagged the iPhone wars as potentially unwinnable and the company's reputation as the asset at risk.

First-order effects

  • Cook publicly rules out the budget-iPhone path analysts had floated since early 2013, making the 5c's premium-adjacent pricing official strategy rather than a rumor to be managed.
  • Ive gets co-billing in the rollout, putting design authority front and center in the argument that Apple competes on product value, not market-share percentage points.

Second-order effects

  • Rivals selling low-cost smartphones in China and other high-volume markets get a clearer lane: Apple is conceding nothing on price, so Android vendors can fight for volume without triggering an Apple response.
  • Investors and pundits who anchored bear cases on cheap-iPhone expectations lose that specific catalyst and must re-litigate the doom thesis on China positioning and upgrade cycles instead.

Third-order effects

  • If the premium-only stance holds, Apple's addressable base becomes defined by willingness to pay rather than handset volume, and the industry splits between share-maximizing Android vendors and a margin-first Apple — with every future product decision judged against that fork.
  • The recurring pattern — growth fears surfacing, management rejecting a cheaper product line, skeptics citing one large market — sets up the same argument to resurface each time iPhone growth decelerates.

The trend: Smartphone competition is hardening into a two-track structure where Apple defends premium margins while Android rivals absorb the volume tier, with China as the proving ground for whether either strategy caps out.

Related: Apple · iPhone · Market Share · Worry Over Sales Spurs Talk of Cheaper iPhones · Apple's growth, an unwinnable iPhone war and a reputation at risk

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