"The share of phones sold in the quarter is of most interest to investors."Actually, not exactly. Let's say Apple sold 30% of all smartphones in a quarter. Now, from an investor standpoint that may seem pretty bad. However, Apple has a much higher profit margin, so what's actually relevant to investors and shareholders from a strict, short-term ROI basis is the share of the total revenue and the share of the total profit. As it turns out, Apple's share of the smartphone market's revenue is around 80%, so even if they dipped down to 30% of all smartphone handsets sold they would still have about half of the revenue.