Of course competitors want more powerful options, and they certainly have the budget for it given the pricing of premium Android devices. Qualcomm simply fell

Of course competitors want more powerful options, and they certainly have the budget for it given the pricing of premium Android devices. Qualcomm simply fell behind. While Apple went for powerful, enormous cores in small numbers, Qualcomm and friends bet on simpler, smaller cores. Apple has started copy/pasting their fantastic cores, yielding the enormous transistor counts. I admit to being a skeptic when Apple went off to do their own thing, sure that a whole industry (and options like the Tegra) would make them eat their hat. Apple executed and are in a remarkable position now.