I hear this line about their business model all the time, however it is bullshit. Given the opportunity all companies will take the money. And I fear that it is nothing more than a conspiracy theory, without much evidence, much like anti-vaxxing.
Google these days is a very big target. The EU would love to have reason to slap them with another fine, given all the legal tax evasion they've been doing. Yet they've always been transparent about what they collect and have always been responsible with user data (versus Facebook).
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the privacy features of my iPhone, it always fared better than Android in that regard, but it has nothing to do with Apple's tight grip of its App Store.
And Google Play takes a 30% commission too ;-)
It's a large amount, even for Apple, but they would survive losing that. Besides that, they are even taunting Google by putting DuckDuckGo in their marketing copy:
https://www.apple.com/macos/big-sur-preview/
They also started a partnership with them in 2019:
https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-maps-gooses-duckduckgo-in-se...
I think they are slowly preparing to loosen that tie.
I hear this line about their business model all the time, however it is bullshit. Given the opportunity all companies will take the money.
I agree. Apple's incentives are just temporarily aligned with customer's privacy. Their margins on hardware, services, etc. are so large that they can afford to make privacy a differentiator. If they are not in that comfortable position anymore, they would monetize the vast user data trove.
But while this is the status quo, I am happy to use an iPhone for privacy.