I’m confused that anyone was surprised by Apple’s admission this past week that its latest iPhones aren’t selling as well as expected. After all, we had seen months of evidence---what I think of as “intelligence chatter”---showing that these iPhones were not selling well. But I’m more alarmed by a narrative I’ve seen repeated again and again in mainstream publications that part of the problem is that Android handsets are “almost as good” as the iPhone and cost much less.

This is nonsense, since Android handsets are superior to the iPhone in very important ways. And they can cost just as much as the iPhone.