I think you are exaggerating how much people care about apple outside US. Apple is popular but Samsung, Xiaomi etc are also very dominant in other markets.

I'm not US based, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Market share is not what matters. When an S30 comes out, nobody cares. When a new iPhone comes out, my mother asks me about it.

This is why you're seeing a lot of people talking about something that Samsung did first.