Everything Apple does drives hardware sales. They're a hardware company. The App Store creates a virtuous cycle that makes their platforms more useful. The point, here, is that they aren't making money from the operation of the store – they're just barely breaking even. Would they operate at a loss to continue improving their device sales? I doubt it. And the crux of this piece is that Apple is doing what it can to keep this monster from turning into a money pit.

Obviously they don't want it to become a money pit, but I still think it only makes sense to consider app store revenues in the big picture of the entire iOS business. I'm sure they'd rather it were profitable but even if the store ran at a reasonable loss it would still be an essential and healthy pillar of their business.