Apple's Shifting Differentiation

Its difficult to think different if you're the world's largest company and dominate the phone market. In laptops it looks like they are differentiating themselves very well.

Apple has a small piece of the smartphone pie. That said, their CPU's are consistently in a class of their own.

Small in units shipped, but dominant in design, aesthetics, and, most importantly, profit margin.

> but dominant in design

Debatable. If anything, modern Android designs are cleaner than iPhone looks.

> aesthetics

Again, debatable.

> and, most importantly, profit margin

This is the key factor, and it's tied to something you missed.

Apple products and iPhones are ahead in profit margins because Apple consistently delivers reasonable quality goods, with few disappointments, so that users trust them. They've gained user trust despite obvious "design, aesthetics" mis-steps such as the notch or the touch bar.

The key words are: consistent delivery, reasonable quality and few disappointments. That's how they hook users in. Apple mostly delivers on time something very close to what they promised and that thing doesn't have catastrophic flaws. That's a much taller bar than you'd think, in the tech sector.