[DangitBobby]

I don't really think it's unreasonable to think that the app store costs them $1 per $1000 they take in, even including all of the work you described. Tellingly, they avoided admitting to their actual margins during the hearing with EPIC.

[realityking]

That seems unrealistic considering credit card margins alone. Stripe will get you 2.9% + $0,30. Even if we assume Apple pays half that, it's already quite a bit more than you assume.

The physical gift card network is likely vastly more expensive. Not only are there frequent sales on these cards (I have no idea of why or how the economics of them work) but the cards need to be printed and the retailer will take a (small) cut.

Lastly, paid apps subsidise free apps. There is a ton of free apps, both from small indie devs and big businesses. They all pay $99/year. I'm pretty sure the bandwidth cost for all of Google's apps is a few orders of magnitude higher than that.

My, relatively unfounded, suspicion is that the App Store has a profit margin of around ~60%. Apple overall seems to strive for a gross profit margin of around 40% and it seems likely the App Store is doing a lot better. Of course this highly depends on what you consider part of the cost associated with the App Store.