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Nokia. Sony. Samsung. LG. Which one isn’t profitable?

As far as fear, smear, and imitate, Apple’s doing a good job of all 3 with Nokia, Sony, Samsung and LG...;) Perspective and all.

But I guess if you want to call the 4th or 5th place player in mobile devices the “dominant” player by some newly defined scale, go ahead. Just try to explain how the “dominant” company is so far behind the others in market share, and how it’s being eclipsed by newer technologies (like Android).

"Just try to explain how the 'dominant' company is so far behind the others in market share, and how it’s being eclipsed by newer technologies (like Android)."

If iPhone is not dominant, why is everyone trying to copy it?

Including Android. That fragmented, chaotic, variable-quality mobile OS whose (highly arguable) "eclipsing" to which you refer is thanks to giveaway and 2-for-1 phones from several manufacturers?

A bigger mystery to me: Why are certain Freepers so eager to defend and extol the fruit of theft, betrayal and dirty dealing? Eric Schmidt is one untrustworthy worm.

"Just try to explain how the “dominant” company is so far behind the others in market share"

Happens all the time in business. When a company jumps into a market and quickly acquires double-digit market share overnight from established entrants, it becomes the horse to beat. It happens all the time. Formerly top players attempt to cling to their position by risk-aversely doing what they've always done, while upstarts saunter in, innovate, change the game and eat their lunch. It's happened to companies I work for, and despite example after example in the annals of business, it seems to always catch the former leaders by surprise.

Let's just pick one of the companies you mentioned. Okay, two: Nokia, for starters. It's nowhere in smartphones. Absolutely nowhere. Now consider Sony. If any company should be Apple today, it's the formerly upscale and stylish Sony. But: it's nowhere in smartphones or personal media (despite defining the term, with the Walkman) or online music distribution, all of which, by rights, it and not Apple should absolutely own. But it doesn't. Instead it's got a brown breeze for market share in smartphones, despite attempts at allying with Palm and Microsoft. It's got bupkes for online music distribution and bupkes for personal media. And so on. Part of its issue is the internal tension between its content-creation acquisitions (e.g., Columbia and Screen Gems, among others) and the demands of new media. Kind of hard to reconcile such opposing internal factions. So today it's a fading company with a self-inflicted strategic chest wound. It's been sad to watch. Then there are even sadder sacks like Motorola, heir to a marvelous tradition (talk about inventing personal media-- they invented the car radio, granddaddy to it all), yet they've been bumping along a step ahead of receivership for years now. Its last, best hope was Android, yet it's been betrayed (like so many others) by its partner Google, when just weeks after it introduced the company-saving Droid, Google stole its thunder with the Nexus One (whose very name was stolen from Philip K. Dick's work).

If there was one company mentioned on this thread that all liberty-minded folks should uniformly regard as detestably evil for a long record of demonstrated behavior, it's Google.