I'd question your first sentence - working for an MSP I get to find out what users really think about their Apple products, and not what they say to their aspirational friends. My company's parent company has connections to Foxconn so we are made to use iPhones for business and there is no way in Hell that the vast majority of us would use them unless we had to or have ones for personal use.
Your comment about their marketing though is spot on. If Apple were to put their logo on wee beige jobbies, they would fly off the shelves by the million.