Must Apple be number one at everything it does? Does being number two — or three for that matter — mean the company has somehow failed? Hardly. With record revenue and profits, it certainly doesn’t seem that the company is confronting potential failure at every turn. But it’s not always the market leader.

Take the Macintosh personal computer. It has never been the most popular PC on the market. Although Apple sells far more than it used to, its worldwide market position ranges from fourth to sixth place. The assumption that the Mac is somehow failing has long ago been disproven. It’s a profitable product, more profitable than most of all of the competition.

So how can it possibly be a failure? Might as well suggest that all auto makers, except for Volkswagen, whose worldwide sales last year were slightly ahead of Toyota, should just give up and close shop.

Oh, and Samsung has often sold more smartphones than Apple, although the iPhone emerged as the market leader again in the December 2017 quarter. But even when Samsung did better in unit sales, Apple still earned far more revenue and profits from its iconic smartphones.

And don’t forget the Apple TV, a product that has yet to demonstrate its expected potential. Should Apple just abandon it?

So where am I heading?

Well, a certain writer at Macworld has done it yet again, this time with a story suggesting what Apple must do in order to gain market share of one of its services, Apple Music.

Why?

Well, the service that descended from Beats Music, and debuted in 2015, now has 36 million paid subscribers. It’s a pretty decent number for the nearly three years of its existence. It is now reported that Apple will soon become number one in the United States.

But those numbers don’t rate so high compared to the 70 million paid Spotify subscribers around the world, meaning there are many countries where the latter is way ahead of Apple Music. So is there anything Apple could or should do in order to achieve number one status?

Does it even matter?

Well, according to the Macworld blogger, Apple should be launching a free tier in order to entice more people to sign on. As it is, you get a three month trial subscription, after which you can opt to continue and have your credit card billed for the service or cancel. The logic is that Apple ought to do offer a totally free version, with the assumption there will eventually be more paid signups.

Spotify reportedly has a total of 140 million active users. If you opt for free, ads are inserted between tracks to derive income, roughly similar to a commercial radio station. Well except for SiriusXM satellite radio, where the music channels are free of ads, but not dj chatter.

Now Apple has not traditionally offered services with paid ads. More to the point, how long does it take for the free members on Spotify to subscribe? A month? Six months? Does anyone outside the company even know? Would doubling the free Apple Music trial — thus six months — make a big difference, or will it just collect additional free loaders who quit and eventually return with different user names and credit cards?

Says, the blogger, “With a free Apple Music tier, Apple would not only get music fans to flock to its service in droves, it could also use it as a way to advertise HomePod as the best way to listen to Apple Music at home and AirPods as the ultimate on-the-go solution. With quick ads between songs, it would be speaking directly to a captive audience who shares a love for music. Simply put, there’s no better way to advertise.”

How does he know? Do most Apple Music subscribers wait till the very last minute to sign up? How many just up and quit? Is it worth setting up a separate advertising division to turn it into roughly the equivalent of a commercial radio station with the hope of increased profits and more conversions to paid memberships? Does Spotify really make much money offering free? What sort of profits does the company even earn?

I’ll be blunt. Even though Spotify’s income has increased every year, it still suffers from hundreds of millions of dollars in red ink. In other words, its marketing plan is failing to yield profits, and you wonder how long it can be sustained before it has to turn the corner. Or will increased cash flow keep it going for the foreseeable future?

So, yes, Spotify has more paid subscribers. But it hasn’t demonstrated that size matters when attempting to earn profits so far.

Macworld’s blogger doesn’t seem to understand that Apple doesn’t put unit sales above revenue and profits. I have little doubt that Apple has considered different marketing plans for Apple Music, and if it could earn big bucks with many more paid signups from a free tier, I suspect they’d consider it.

But I don’t know if they could, and the blogger suggesting that they do offer a free service doesn’t either. That Apple Music will become number one in the U.S. may only be the beginning of a trend and, over the years, maybe it will overtake Spotify. But Apple is not going to kill the service’s profits to get there.

When it comes to actual fake news, Apple is often the victim of phony stories about one thing or another. The reasons why are varied. So putting Apple in the headline, good or bad, is certain hit bait. That means more ad clicks, and more money.

But I often wonder whether some of those faux stories aren’t fueled by Apple’s competitors. Certainly they have motives, because Apple earns the lion’s share of profits in the smartphone business, lots more than even Samsung. Apple pretty much owns the smartwatch market with Apple Watch, and the iPad, with sales on the rise again, dominates tablets. You get the picture.

Obviously, there’s no clear evidence if another company is instigating those unfavorable comments or the alleged bad news that’s based on lies. But I can see where some carefully selected bloggers and so-called industry analysts might be encouraged to post reports that are deliberately manipulated to make Apple look bad. I wouldn’t suggest any transfer of money or goods is ever involved.

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What’s in a week? That’s something Apple’s critics didn’t think about in speculating that iPhone X sales tanked — big time. Despite surveys showing the opposite, the stories were enough to impact the company’s stock price in recent days as people waited for the bad news. Or perhaps lots of corporate spin control.

The end result was somewhat mixed. Revenue hit record levels, iPhone revenue hit record levels. But then there were other numbers, which missed estimates.

But, as I said, it’s about a week.

So the December quarter in 2016 lasted 14 weeks; last year it lasted 13 weeks, and that meant for some sales shortfalls.

So iPhone sales declined from 78.3 million in the year-ago quarter. This year they totaled 77.3, a decline of 1.2%. But what a minute! The sales mix made a big difference. Despite claims that customers would resist the $999 price tag for the entry level iPhone X, claims that persisted for months, that definitely wasn’t how it turned out. According to Canalys, a worldwide market analysis firm, the iPhone X was the top-selling smartphone on planet Earth in the December quarter.

Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed those results, saying, “It has been our top selling phone every week since it launched.”

But remember that it didn’t launch till about six weeks after the iPhone 8 family shipped, so it had lots of catching up to do. The sales picture was helped along by the fact that supplies approached demand right before Christmas, another development the skeptics didn’t predict. You may also be surprised to learn that the second-best selling smartphone worldwide was the iPhone 8 Plus, followed by the iPhone 8.

That wasn’t what the skeptics expected, not even close. So rather than preferring cheaper gear, customers went large in both display size and price. This may encourage Apple to consider building an ever bigger iPhone X this fall, something that’s already been predicted.

As to other numbers, revenue totaled $88.3 billon compared to $78.4 billion the previous year. That’s a big increase by any measurement and it exceeds Apple’s guidance that ranged between $84 billion and $87 billion. Cook also announced that the company’s active installed base of devices hit 1.3 billion, representing a 30% increase over the past two years.

For the third consecutive quarter, iPad sales increased, but just 0.7% to 13.2 million. Revenue grew by 5.9%, meaning that sales were weighted towards the more expensive iPad Pros. According to Apple, half of those iPad sales went to first-time buyers or those switching from other platforms. Take that Samsung!

Interesting that this is what Apple used to say about Mac sales, quarter after quarter, but not recently.

The arrival of the iMac Pro at the end of the quarter, however, didn’t help Mac sales much. They still fell 4.8% to 5.1 million, with revenue declining by similar amount. Indeed, this is one of those rare instances where Mac sales were actually lower than estimated by Gartner and IDC, which usually understate those figures. Again, that missing week surely didn’t help.

On the other hand, it does appear the Apple Watch is doing quite well. Even though sales figures are buried in the Other Products category, Cook said that the Apple Watch grew 50% in both revenue and units sold for the December quarter compared to the previous year. At a time where other smartwatches are tanking, Apple has assumed a high percentage of the market all for itself. It’s hard to even remember what those other models are.

Unfortunately some of this growth may be due for a pause. Apple’s guidance for the current quarter includes revenue of $60-62 billon. Wall Street was expecting something in the range of $65 billion. But some of the naysayers were suggesting that March quarter revenue would be in the $60 billion range or less.

But remember that Apple exceeded its guidance for the December quarter, so revenue for this quarter may also be higher than the early numbers indicate. Apple is generally conservative with its quarterly guidance.

What is helping Apple is the fact that the average sale price of iPhones has soared because of the popularity of the iPhone X and the iPhone 8 Plus. Again, this was not what Apple critics expected when they spent the better part of a year telling us all how people would reject a $999 iPhone, or even a $799 model, the iPhone 8 Plus.

Despite what you might expect by missing some expectations, Wall Street is reacting positively to the December quarter results. In after hours trading, Apple stock rose 3.35% to $173.40 per share.

Whatever you say about Apple, it is a money machine, and reporting sales a few billion more or less isn’t hurting so much. But these results have surely overturned expectations big time for the future. Does it mean Apple will place a greater emphasis on more expensive models, or just continue to balance the iPhone lineup with cheaper products, such as the iPhone SE and some older models, to allow it to reach a wider range of customers.

1.3 billon active devices is certainly something to shout about.

In any case, that’s it for the hard figures. If you want to dive more deeply into the numbers, you can find them at Apple’s Hot News site.

You must know that Apple’s soon-to-ship HomePod smart speaker is doomed to fail. This all comes before anyone outside of the news media has spent any time with one, so why?

Well, maybe that it’s a couple of months late, thus missing the lucrative holiday season, that it’s extremely ate to the party compared to the Amazon Echo and the Google Home, and don’t forget the high price of admission.

But don’t forget that Apple is not always first to market a new device.

Forgotten in all this fear mongering is the fact that sound quality is reputed to be far better than the competition from Amazon and Google, thus justifying a higher price. So if you actually want a speaker system that you can enjoy on its own terms, rather than have something usually more useful in the background, HomePod may be just the ticket.

Of course, you still have a price of $349, and double that once the ability to pair two of them in stereo mode is available.

And don’t forget the issue of privacy. How many times have you seen a police procedural TV show where a mic is placed in a suspect’s home, or maybe the resident computer hacker keeps the cell phone on. Everything that’s said is monitored and recorded and, eventually, someone says something that provides evidence of the crime-of-the-week.  Now with Amazon and Google, what about the things you say in your home? With the Echo, you have to say Alexa to turn it on and make what you say accessible in the cloud, but have you wondered why police are reportedly interested?

I don’t want anyone to listen to what I say in my home. The only mic I turn on is the one connected to my studio mixer, which I use to record my radio shows. I have no interest in sending my comments to third parties other than the guests and listeners to my radio shows.

In any case, I’m not going to guess on how well the HomePod will do. Can it be compared to the original iPod, which debuted in 2001 for $50 more in a package that stored a mere 1,000 songs? With the HomePod, you’ll be able to play anything in your iTunes library, so you’re already ahead. And what about the failed iPod Hi-Fi which, by the way, also sold for $349.

Well you can look at a potential click bait article from, surprisingly enough, Macworld, entitled “HomePod’s biggest problem isn’t Siri, it’s that it’s too much like the original iPod.”

Oh?

I honestly don’t think the piece is worth a link. But it starts by detailing Apple’s latest ad compaign for the HomePod, featured last Sunday on the Grammy Awards. But the main complaint is that the HomePod is, at present, designed to operate strictly within Apple’s ecosystem.

So that limits its potential audience, but nothing new. Sure, you don’t need an iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple Watch to use an Apple TV. After all, iTunes is available for Windows and has been for years, and you don’t need iTunes to access Netflix.

But Macworld’s blogger cites the fact that the original iPod debuted strictly with Mac support, but only towards the end of the article does he recognize the fact that it soon expanded to support Windows. That marked the beginning of Apple’s huge ascent to the consumer electronics stratosphere.

So, yes, an iPhone probably functions best with a Mac, with support for Continuity and other integration features. But it will work on Windows too, and it is also true that the iPhone user base is many times that of the Mac.

So would supporting Android provide the magic bullet to make a HomePod far more successful? Perhaps, but it would seriously restrict the features Apple can add that depend on its own ecosystem, and what about Siri?

But the deal breaker in such a romantic theory is that Apple doesn’t need Android to build a successful smart speaker. In 2001, the Mac user base could be counted in the tens of millions. It’s still probably less than 100 million even though Apple has, in recent years, sold up to 20 million Macs per year.

In contrast, there are hundreds of millions of iPhone users. What percentage of that user base needs to buy a HomePod before it becomes wildly successful? Why would Apple have to consider Android support? Certainly the Apple Watch became the number one smartwatch on the planet even though it’s restricted to recent iPhones. Its tight integration would make it near impossible to expand support to other platforms, but why does Apple need to bother?

Indeed, one key reason to build products that only work with other Apple gear is to grow the ecosystem and revenue from Apple’s services. Unlike the original iPod, there is little if any incentive to open the barn door of Apple’s walled garden to satisfy the needs of the critics and Android users who might want to buy a HomePod or an Apple Watch.

If the want to buy them, they know what they have to do. That’s two more compelling arguments in favor of switching to Apple.