Why would Apple care about profits or margins its rivals are achieving? What matters is what Reuters is suggesting: For whatever reason (they suggest pricing/economy) people are buying not-iPhones instead of iPhones in what appears to be an increasing number of cases. Market share is an indication of that. Apple may not care about market share as a metric per say, but the company absolutely cares about people buying not-iPhones instead of iPhones. This, of course, is why they're suing every single one of their biggest competitors to begin with.
> "Why would Apple care about profits or margins its rivals are achieving?"
Because not all smartphones are in the same market segment.
If competitors are selling expensive phones, it's relevant to Apple's interests. It means they're legitimately getting beaten in the segment they're actively targeting. (The subsidized/$400+ segment)
But if competitors are selling cheap phones, then those sales don't represent any sort of loss to Apple as those customers were probably not going to spend 400+ on a phone and Apple has no (apparent) designs on the low-margin market. They would seemingly rather cede the $200 phone segment entirely than compete in it.
And whether those $200 phones are running Symbian or Android or whatever else is largely irrelevant to Apple.
And again, this is not unlike the way they've ceded the low-margin segment in every other market they compete in.
