Jay Yarow explains:

Each quarter we get an uglier and uglier market share number for Apple's platform. The latest, as we noted, shows Android phones are outselling iPhones by a wide gap. 

Despite the bad market share numbers, iPhone sales in absolute terms are still doing well. The iPhone generated $19.5 billion in revenue for Apple in the September quarter. It sold 33.8 million iPhones, which was ahead of expectations, and up 26% on a year-over-year basis. 

Now lets put that in context:

• Google's total revenue for the quarter was $14.9 billion, a 12% jump year-over-year. (If you just look at Google's ad business revenue was $12.5 billion, up 15% year-over-year.)
• Microsoft's total revenue was $18.5 billion, a 7% jump.
• Amazon's total revenue was $17.09 billion, up 24%.

Apple's iPhone business is bigger, and importantly, growing faster than Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, the three giants Apple is competing against in mobile. 

That's JUST the iPhone business. Does not include iPads, iPods, and computers. 

And their margins are are high, right?

"Another argument from people that think Apple should lower prices is that carriers are either going to shut out, or screw-over Apple. Therefore it should preemptively capitulate.

Please. 

Even carriers, who play hardball with Apple, know that the iPhone is a big deal. 

On Friday, Japan's largest carrier NTT Docomo added 279,100 net users. Why? From Bloomberg's report: "The main reason Docomo added more new users than other carriers is because it began offering the iPhone, said Hiroko Shimoyama, a company spokeswoman." Docomo didn't have the iPhone until recently.

This isn't an anomaly. In the U.S., before T-Mobile had the iPhone, it said it lost 700,000 subscribers in one quarter because customers were bolting for carriers that offered the iPhone."

Yes, iPhone has high margins because the carriers are willing to subsidize a premium price.

Also, the chart at the top compares revenues of AppStore vs global mobile advertising.

Those markets are almost the same size. Amazing!

At a 30% cut, Apple netted an extra $3 billion this year IN ADDITION TO all the hardware revenues.

Wow.

What impresses you the most?

That directly selling things to consumers brings in almost as much revenue as advertising to them.