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by JimDabell 847 days ago
> Apple's no longer a hardware company, they're a platform rent extraction company.

Apple still make the vast majority of their revenue from hardware. All of their service revenue combined is only about 20% of their revenue.

3 comments

Revenue doesn't really matter, you should look at profits. Amazon makes most of their revenue from the website, but pretty much all of their profits come from cloud. The tech giant business model is to dominate distribution and extract profits by self preferencing. Im sure apple's services division is a good portion of their profits.
> Revenue doesn't really matter

Grandparent is claiming that Apple aren’t a hardware company any more. Pointing out that the vast majority of their income comes from hardware is totally relevant.

Apple brings in hundreds of billions from selling hardware every year. They are definitely still a hardware company.

The income is irrelevant if it's just a vessel to make profits from the services. In detriment of the user, who once could trust that they were buying a device, but now are getting locked in some subscription schemes.

Apple has passed the event horizon of extracting profits now.

> The income is irrelevant if it's just a vessel to make profits from the services.

It’s not though. Apple are bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars every year from hardware. That’s not a means to an end, that is the end itself.

You seem to not understand the difference between income and profit.
I do, but unless you think Apple’s hundreds of billions in hardware revenue is some kind of loss leader, it’s irrelevant.

Apple are a hardware company. It’s bizarre that you are trying to argue otherwise. They make more money from selling consumer hardware than practically every other company in the world.

He seems to have a habit of doing this.

A few weeks ago I was also stuck in a situation where he appeared to play dumb and refused to acknowledge the contradictions in his positions and the level of indignation that followed afterwards was unbelievable.

Out of curiosity, what is the margin on their service income vs. their hardware income?
It doesn’t matter. They bring in hundreds of billions of dollars per year from hardware. They are definitely still a hardware company.
You cannot simply state where the revenue comes from. Apple sells hardware and services. The services promote the hardware. The hardware promotes the services. It is an eco system into which many people and companies, including companies that create software for that system, are bought.

Of course Apple tries to squeeze out of this system as possible at different fronts.

That's where government laws come in, to make the playing field more even.