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Competition is good. But calling a winner right now? Too early. Apple never wanted the "whole market." If they do start going after the low end then I would call that the beginning of the end. How do you figure they made the mountain of cash they are sitting on now? It was partly by staying far away from the low end of the market and focusing on obscene margins.
Dell is a nice foil for Apple's story. Dell tried to sell to everyone and they are on the verge of dying. Gateway didn't do much better with that approach. I expect HP's PC's to move away from the bottom eventually. A profitable niche beats losing money on higher volume.
The mobile market is fickle. It wasn't that long ago that HTC was at or near the top. Now they're playing a second-fiddle to Samsung. I see one key to Samsung's popularity is making a wider spread of models. I don't know if they address the low end but they sure have a lot of form factors at the high end. Kudos for the engineering and manufacturing talent to bring THAT much to market. Oh, and don't forget how much money they are spending on advertising. For the last year or more Samsung's ads are everywhere.
I'm a happy owner of a higher-end Samsung washer & dryer set for years now so I've got nothing against them as a brand. A few friends have Samsung's recent 'smart' TV's and they look very good to me.
I'd like to see Google exert more control over hardware requirements for Android. Even their own development team mentioned that as a regret at the recent I/O conference. Not too late to see a course correction in the next major versions.
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