[spicyj]

From the earnings report: Apple sold $12.25B worth of iPhones and Apple TVs in the last quarter.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/10/19results.html

In the first month of the App Store, (arguably not very close to now, but still) Apple sold about $30M in apps, of which it takes only a 30% cut. The difference between hardware and software sales is a few orders of magnitude.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121842341491928977.html

[aditya]

Ah, right. But which one is apple profiting more from? The hardware with it's high cost or the app store with it's virtually zero cost?

[spicyj]

Excuse me, I forgot to write: profit from the iPhones and Apple TVs is about $2.85B, if I understand the report correctly.

They'd need to sell $3.2B on the App Store each month to match the hardware profit figures.