In a rare interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook spoke on a number of topics ranging from the launch of new iPhones, thoughts on Apple rivals, Android fragmentation and the rise and fall of Nokia.

Here are some excerpts from that article. Tim Cook explains the objective of making the new iPhone 5c, which was rumored to cost around $300-$400, but was launched at an unsubsidized price of $549, only $100 cheaper than the high-end iPhone 5s.

To Cook, the mobile industry doesn’t race to the bottom, it splits. One part does indeed go cheap, with commoditized products that compete on little more than price. “There’s always a large junk part of the market,” he says. “We’re not in the junk business.” The upper end of the industry justifies its higher prices with greater value. “There’s a segment of the market that really wants a product that does a lot for them, and I want to compete like crazy for those customers,” he says. “I’m not going to lose sleep over that other market, because it’s just not who we are. Fortunately, both of these markets are so big, and there’s so many people that care and want a great experience from their phone or their tablet, that Apple can have a really good business.” [..]

[..] “We never had an objective to sell a low-cost phone,” says Cook. “Our primary objective is to sell a great phone and provide a great experience, and we figured out a way to do it at a lower cost.”

He had this to say about competition from Android based smartphones:

“I think it’s even more a two-operating-system world today than it was before,” Cook says. But, he adds, “when you look at things like customer satisfaction and usage, you see the gap between Android and iOS being huge.”

[..] This leads Cook to a point he makes a lot: People may buy Android devices, but the ones they actually use have an Apple logo on the back. 

[..] “Does a unit of market share matter if it’s not being used?” Cook asks. “For us, it matters that people use our products. We really want to enrich people’s lives, and you can’t enrich somebody’s life if the product is in the drawer.”

He also commented on Android fragmentation:

“I don’t think of Android as one thing,” Cook says.

In Cook’s view, the incompatibilities between various Android versions make each an entirely different species. The Android operating systems are “not the latest ones by the time people buy,” he says. A recent survey of smartphones sold by AT&T showed 25 Android handsets; six did not have the latest operating system. “And so by the time they exit, they’re using an operating system that’s three or four years old. That would be like me right now having in my pocket iOS 3. I can’t imagine it.”

Fragmentation creates complexity and what Cook calls a “compounding problem.” “It will show up in developers,” he says. “It will show up for people that no longer have access to certain apps. It will show up in security issues because if you’re not moving your customer base to the latest version, then you have to go back and plug holes in all of this old stuff, and people don’t really do that to a great degree.” 

He also spoke about Nokia, whose handset and services businesses were acquired by Microsoft.

“Everybody is trying to adopt Apple’s strategy,” Cook says in regard to the Nokia purchase. “We’re not looking for external validation of our strategy, but I think it does suggest that there’s a lot of copying, kind of, on the strategy and that people have recognized that importance.”

If one part of Nokia’s story is validating, the other is cautionary. When Apple got into the mobile business, it was Nokia’s world. The Finnish company was considered something of a miracle worker. “I’m old enough to remember when Nokia had margins of 25 percent, and there was absolutely no way they were going to be dislodged from their leadership position,” says Kuittinen of research firm Alekstra. Says Cook, “I think [Nokia] is a reminder to everyone in business that you have to keep innovating and that to not innovate is to die.”

Reacting to drop in Apple’s share price after the launch of the new iPhones, Tim Cook said that he preferred to focus on doing the right things, rather than allow somebody else or the market dictate things.