[elashri]

Doesn't courts have the power to ask Apple to actually calculate this number and give the supporting evidence about that? Because judges are not robots and understand that it is really Apple doesn't want to know the number so that it doesn't have to disclose the margin. This is probably not the first a time a company trying this tactic in court. It would be surprising (for me) if not.

[Clent]

How could they calculate this if they weren't tracking it?

The cost would need to included not just development hours that have gone into creating and maintaining the system, but hours of other employee's used for the project. Also the servers, the network, buildings, etc.

If there were forced to calculate this number, it wouldn't surprise me if they were able to do so in a manner that shows they lose money. At best they could be forced to track the cost going forward using a third party auditor.

[elashri]

> If there were forced to calculate this number, it wouldn't surprise me if they were able to do so in a manner that shows they lose money

That's why a court would ask for the procedures that they followed and revise if they did something like that intentionally. This would be the definition of malicious compliance.

[danpattn]

It isn't hard. It is basic managerial accounting. You just need access to lots of internal data. Ultimate parent level GAAP accounting won't provide the specific details you need. Apple definitely knows what the number is, every 10k they won't shut up about how much growth is coming from services.