For the better part of a decade, Apple has consistently shown that having a comparatively small market share by volume is no impediment to making money, and lots of it. Despite the company's PC share hovering in single digits through most of the 2000s, Apple has been far and away the most profitable computer hardware maker for many years (and generally coming second only to software-centric Microsoft in generating cash). Now that inverse relationship between share and profits continues into the mobile space.
Analysis firm Canaccord Genuity estimates that Apple accounts for only 3.9 percent of total global volume sales of mobile handsets. However, the iPhones sold in the third quarter of 2010 accounted for approximately 47 p
