[nonane]

The paid App Store or Android market will never be a revenue stream for Apple or Google. In fact it is probably designed to be break-even at best. They need interesting apps to push their respective platforms further - that's where the gold mine is for both companies (apple gets to sell more hardware and goog gets more searches)

[gamble]

Yep, the difference between them is that Apple had the luxury of waiting a year before tackling the app store (and experience with iTunes to draw from) whereas Google needed an app store on Day 1, albeit a store they could neglect.

[Tichy]

The Apple App store sucks, too.

[berntb]

Point, but they also got something existing to copy -- and be compared against.

[forgottenpaswrd]

Point, it is way easier(and far less work) to copy than to design something from scratch.

[berntb]

That was half of my point; the other half is that the copy will be compared to the original.

When you steal a design and reimplement, only Microsoft (ten years ago, not now) got away with doing it worse...

[jberryman]

I guess the app store has accounted for about 1% of Apple's profits since 2008:

http://www.cultofmac.com/analyst-app-store-just-1-percent-of...

Seems like a pretty huge return on investment, although a small percentqge of their overall profits. Hilariously most of Apple's percentage of an app sale goes to CC companies