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by basch 519 days ago
The App Store is dependent on the OS. The OS is dependent on the hardware. Are you including the cost of API development, architecture, and hardware R&D into the probability of the app store.

Because that is what Apple is round-a-bout saying. That its such an integrated product, you can't tally the net revenue from one component and call it profit.
3 comments
karaterobot 519 days ago
Right, they would have to define their parameters first, and there might be a margin of error. But then, that's true of every revenue number they track. And this probably is one of the most important sources of revenue they have. So, I just try unsuccessfully to imagine a scenario where an executive says "I guess we'll never know if revenue is going up or down, c'est la vie!"
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xhkkffbf 519 days ago
Realistically, it's not fair to put many of the costs of iOS development on the App store. They would need to do it anyway. And if there were no App store, they would still be designing their product as a collection of independent apps. That's what MacOS is anyway. So they would still need to build all of the features for supporting apps into iOS, even if they never allowed any outside apps.
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robertlagrant 519 days ago
> And if there were no App store, they would still be designing their product as a collection of independent apps. That's what MacOS is anyway.

MacOS yes, but if they were just shipping a phone with built in applications it would look quite a lot different I'd imagine.

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lostlogin 519 days ago
Do you really believe that Tim Cook doesn’t know the profit margin on a key Apple product?
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basch 519 days ago
How much "profit" does the app store need to pay back to all the api development that powers the apps under the hood?

Similar to the amazon dont make a profit for a decade by dumping it into growth, Apple can dump all their app store "profit" into developing new api's that apps can access, such as ai tools etc.

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BriggyDwiggs42 519 days ago
Apple is quite large, so I suspect they don’t exactly use the same strategy as Amazon did in its early days. It also wouldn’t be profit, because that would be an expense they would keep track of.
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