[stephenr]

Revenue.

Super Mario Run is a 220mb app, and it was downloaded 40 million times in 4 days. That's 8.8 petabytes of data transferred, for one app in 4 days.

A lot of apps don't go the in-app-purchase route, they rely on advertising, and if using e.g. Google's ad network, Apple gets just the $99/year to host who knows how many millions of downloads of the app.

No one claimed Apple doesn't make money on the App Store, but to claim that it's some massive profit machine for Apple is ignoring the reality of what it costs to host all the apps Apple makes just $99/year from.

[candiodari]

Well if you ever want to pay me 30% of 28 billion for an 8.8 petabyte transfer in 4 days, call me.

I'll buy you a bay area house from the spare change. Hell, I'll buy you 10 of them. Complimentary.

[stephenr]

You missed my point, by.. a lot.

Nintendo don't pay 8 billion dollars for Apple to hose Super Mario Run.

They paid $99 a year, or maybe $299 a year if they have an enterprise account.

Sure, Apple doubtless made a lot of money from people buying IAP for that game, but as I said, a lot of games and even utility apps don't monetise via IAP or selling the app itself - they rely on advertising, which Apple likely gets $0 from.

But hey, way to completely twist what I said to make a stupid fucking joke.