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Well, that depends on the rest of your math. Consider two recent news items: a Microsoft blog post on Friday afternoon written to counter recent chatter about the company's fortunes; and an outside analysis of what Apple pays to build an iPhone 4.

Friday's "Microsoft by the numbers," by company spokesman Frank Shaw, recited various sales, license, traffic, usage and financial data to make the case that the Redmond, Wash., firm--whatever the stock market may think--is doing quite well.

For example, Shaw writes that with 150 million Windows 7 licenses sold to date, that Windows release is "by far the fastest growing operating system in history." While Apple sold 8.8 million iPhones in the first quarter of 2010, he notes that Nokia sold 21.5 million smartphones in the same period (Microsoft's own Windows Mobile platform goes unmentioned in this post). And while Google's Gmail may have 173 million users worldwide, Microsoft's Windows Live Hotmail exceeds that and Yahoo with its 360 million users around the globe.

And so on.

But things aren't so simple or easy for Microsoft as Shaw suggests. MG Siegler does a fine job of that in this TechCrunch post. I'd add that Shaw's statistical snapshots ignore the effect of trends in too many cases: How have Apple and Nokia's smartphone sales and Google and Microsoft's Webmail numbers changed over the last five years? In others, he gives too much credit for past achievements: As long as nearly every PC manufacturer has to sell the newest version of Windows on its machines, a new Windows release should be a best-seller.

But the point I'd rather make is one about press coverage. We're not supposed to parcel this out by market share. We're also supposed to look for what's changing--especially change of the disruptive or innovative sort--then evaluate those shifts. That's why over the last decade, Apple's successful reinvention of its operating system earned coverage alongside a series of far more widely used, but often underwhelming, Microsoft Windows updates.

Speaking of disruptive changes, let's look at today's release about a "teardown" analysis of Apple's new iPhone 4 by El Segundo, Calif.-based market-research firm iSuppli. This study--not yet posted to iSuppli's Web site--is already being reported under such headlines as DailyFinance's "Cost to Build Apple's iPhone 4? $188."

Sure--if you assume Apple gets its software development, hardware engineering and product testing for free. I don't know what the Cupertino, Calif., company pays for those items, but I can assure you it's not zero. (ISuppli itself, which does good research in a variety of hardware-industry areas, is careful to note that distinction in its finer print.)

It's no secret that Apple collects some elevated profit margins. But it's a serious stretch to take iSuppli's research--which is legitimately useful in identifying the iPhone's components and their suppliers--as evidence that it's earning the kind of returns normally associated with loan sharks.