LT has phenomenally expensive chips. You want to spend $7 on a bloody linear regulator? Go LT.
ADI has expensive chips, but not that expensive. I've used ADI linear regulators before because they had some specific, obscure spec I wanted, and they certainly didn't blow the BOM even if they made me cringe a bit. TI are even cheaper and just as good, but ADI has more obscure stuff.
I don't know how LT even stays in business. I like that they are mainly a N. American company but if you actually were to pay the asking price for their chips you could never compete economically. I basically filter out LT stuff when I'm looking for power stuff its just way to much money for modest if any significant improvements over the competitors. The end user doesn't care about fancy resonant topologies or minor efficency gains they just want it cheap and to work.
OnSemi, TI, SEMTECH and even Alpha and Omega have just as good chips for a fraction of the price. AD has some good stuff but its still kept reasonable price considering what you are getting.
I've seen Apple use quite a few LT chips - so I'm sure if they try, LT can compete on price. But, LT doesn't sell much into the consumer or low cost market. They sell well into the high end, expensive market, requiring high reliability and performance.
Open an Agilent/Tek scope, or a piece of telecoms gear, or high end network gear and you'll probably see LT chips used in quite a few places. Notice LT has a huge number of chips optimised for -48V positive ground telecom systems.
Sometimes they're the only place for specific solutions - I've used the LT3471 myself on a design - it's hard to get something of that sort of density from anyone else (at least at the time.) And the price was reasonable, considering the benefits it had.
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