[saurik]

I did the math out for people in my talk at JailbreakCon, and <1% of Apple's iPhone-related profit could possibly be coming from the App Store, and it is likely quite a bit less than that (I made a couple conservative estimates, and totally ignored iPod and iPad hardware).

(The talk was recorded, and I believe has been posted in various places; it also goes through why tiered pricing models for things like bandwidth work the way they do, as many people who are confused by the App Store also never worked that out for themselves either.)

[mistercow]

Edit: Ignore me. I misread the parent comment.

"I've done the math before, and this post is wrong" isn't very compelling when the post in question shows the math behind its conclusion. What would be most compelling would be to point out the flaw in the post's math, and also to show us your own approach.

[mst]

Actually, he was saying "I've done the math before, and the results are actually even more skewed than the post suggests".

So you can take the post as right on the basis of the math in there, or even -more- right on the basis of saurik's calculations.

I think "The talk was recorded, and I believe has been posted in various places" was basically "you can find a citation if you look but I don't have one handy, sorry", which is fair enough for a brief HN comment; I, at least, still find the data point somewhat useful.

[saurik]

No. I was pointing out yet another quite specifically different number, and pointing out a way for people interested in this to learn more on this topic.

This article is focusing on a specific number that I actually found quite hilarious (money made from the App Store being swamped by developer hardware), and is not something I have previously analyzed.

[mistercow]

Oh I see. I misread your comment. My apologies.

[mtgx]

This post talks about the "App Store profit" not "iPhone-related profit", though. So it could very well be that out of 30% they ask for only half of that is pure profit, while that 15% translates to only about 1% of an iPhone's profit.

[saurik]

Right... I was adding yet another interesting number and telling people where they could learn more. The goal of this author's post is to demonstrate to people how the App Store is not Apple's profit center, but still comes from a place of surprise: as I have analyzed this many times, I hoped to drive this home for anyone (and hopefully remove any remaining surprise or question). Sadly, people seem to believe that the only motive someone could have in such a situation is to correct or call out, despite my post not ever saying the original post was wrong and talking about a different number.