It's a bit disappointing when "the world" and "USA" are used interchangeably. The US market is fairly small. Things are quite different in other places.
That’s interesting but is it also a good reason to use “USA” and “the world” interchangeably?
Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Portugal, Finland, Ireland and Romania combined – all EU member nations – are about equal to the US. They have a larger combined population (about 460 million v. about 310 million) but the USA certainly don’t beat them by a factor of 5 even taking population into account, more like a factor of 1.5.
The article doesn't actually use "the USA" and "the world" interchangeably. It just says that Apple is the #1 buyer of flash memory in the world. I regret making my initial comment because in the context of the article, the comment I was responding to makes little sense.
Sorry for the ambiguity on my part. I meant that the claims made about iPhones price are based on USA. In many other markets the price differences of iPhone and HTC Desire are quite significant(where i am, it's $940 vs $620). Not to mention that you can get a $210 android phone. Money is not that important for lots of people but looking at the world its very important.
Also iPod's market share is dwarfed by music-phones. It might be true for US and many other rich countries that people don't use that feature and use their iPod instead but in a significant part of the world people cannot afford to cash out $250 for iPod nano just to get a better user experience from their music player. Yes you can get a iPod shuffle for $65 but thats not an upgrade anymore.
Same goes for MacBooks. The equal quality products might have a fairly small price difference, but many people cannot afford to cash out $1400 for a laptop. Especially if there is an alternative available for $500. They are not comparable based on specs and quality etc, but they are comparable in that you can browse facebook, look at pictures and IM on both of them.
Anyway, i agree with Apple making great quality products and that they are nowadays more affordable than ever. I just don't agree with making conclusion about the world based on one quite rich country and belittling other manufacturers who build affordable products for the ones who cannot afford those premium prices.
Only because that list segments by country. If you add up the EU countries you'd have a bigger market than the US and that is as much a single market as the US states are if what you're selling is electronics.
I imagine the really cheap mp3 players would sell pretty well outside the US. I was quite surprised he couldn't find digital audio players much cheaper than an iPod. I've seen mp3 players for well under half the price of an iPod shuffle in Australia, and I imagine in China there would be an even bigger difference.
