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In business, as in life, there are things you can try to control, and things you can't control at all. Apple's third quarter fiscal report on Tuesday demonstrated the dichotomy.

Apple (ticker: AAPL) delivered better revenue and profit than expected, which was nice, albeit a consequence of vastly reduced expectations: Estimates for revenue and profit had declined 21% and 36%, respectively, in the last six months. The stock rose by 5% the next day and ended the week up 4% at $440.99.

Apple sold 31.2 million smartphones in the quarter, up 20% year over year, and more than Wall Street had projected. Also very nice. But the average price declined 4% from the prior-year quarter, and fell from the fiscal second-quarter level, as many buyers sought out the cheaper iPhone 4 and 4S, versus the more expensive iPhone 5.

Apple can't control the fact that the incremental buyer for smartphones wants something less expensive, so the company did its best to make less-expensive units widely available at "affordable" prices.

Apple sold fewer iPads than expected, 14.6 million versus expectations of about 17 million. That was in part because the company didn't refresh the iPad this spring as it had a year earlier with a high-resolution model, according to CEO Tim Cook.

That was clearly a case of Apple just failing to come up with the goods necessary to spur another upgrade wave that would ensure the kind of cadence that Wall Street desires.

ONE COULD SAY APPLE HASN'T done enough to create the high-value product that would sell at the top end of the price scale, though that's debatable, at least in the case of the iPhone. The iPhone 5 was still the top seller among the three, even given the cheaper units' strong showing.

We've heard reports for the last month or so, moreover, that Samsung Electronics' (005930.Korea) more expensive model, the Galaxy S4, has shown lower shipment numbers than some analysts predicted when it debuted in March. And so even Apple's powerful rival cannot completely control either unruly expectations or changing buying patterns, or both. Samsung has said sales of the S4 last quarter were "solid." (Whatever that means.)

Data from research firms Strategy Analytics and IDC suggest both Apple and Samsung are contending with a shifting smartphone landscape. The second-quarter smartphone data showed that virtually all the smaller players had notable appreciation in smartphone market share. LG Electronics and Chinese players Lenovo, ZTE, and Huawei all noted superior market-share percentage gains. It remains to be seen if Apple and Samsung are both facing a "Buy Chinese" mentality in the world's largest, and one of the fastest-growing, smartphone market.

Data are not yet available on second-quarter pricing, but Strategy Analytics's Neil Mawston notes that in the first quarter prices on average fell 12%, adding "the smartphone mix globally is tilting from postpaid to prepaid, and from developed to emerging markets, and those two trends are slanting the industry's average smartphone price down rather than up."

An especially dour report from Citigroup's Glen Yeung on Thursday suggested in fact that there is nothing Apple can control. The market for smartphones will be completely saturated by next year in the U.S. and other developed markets, he opines. There are 1.4 smartphones in use for every adult person who would buy a phone. So there just aren't enough new buyers.

Something similar will be the case in developing economies by 2016, he reckons. Nor does he think there's much Apple can do to goose the market. Having swallowed the camera, the GPS device, the MP3 player, the portable media player, the digital picture frame, and other once discrete gadgets, there just isn't a lot of utility for Apple or Samsung to conquer and incorporate into their wares.

ONE THING WAS MISSING in Yeung's grim assessment—the same thing many miss because they are focusing on Apple's hardware units. Apple controls a platform, one of the two dominant platforms in mobile computing, its iOS software, which is an effective duopoly with Google's Android. In the category of software and services, Apple sold $3.99 billion last quarter, which was up 25% from the year-earlier quarter. That was slower than the 37% growth recorded last year, but still impressive for a business running at $16 billion annually.

Why is that important? Again and again, mobile market stats, and anecdotal evidence show that people want these devices increasingly for the applications and services they can consume with them. The same data suggest Apple's customers are willing to pay up for those apps and content and services somewhat more than users of Android.

Being at the center of an ecosystem that makes money for app developers and advertisers and publishers is a position of control that Apple maintains that is still valuable even if the mobile device market is rather out of control right now.

Tiernan Ray can be reached at tiernan.ray@barrons.com, http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily or www.twitter.com/barronstechblog