Re:The App Store is a monopoly: Here's why the EU is correct...
by ac29 on Friday July 31, 2020 @11:31PM
(#24017192)
I cant find any evidence in their financial reports of Apple breaking down sales and cost of sales for the App store in early years. I would be very, very surprised though if it was not profitable almost immediately (unless you creatively move around numbers and claim 100% of the iPhone's R&D was a cost of sale for the app store).
Re:The App Store is a monopoly: Here's why the EU is correct...
by pwinnski on Monday August 03, 2020 @10:24AM
(#24038118)
You are correct, I am taking their early claims at face value, but they never produced supporting numbers. I would be shocked if their claims weren't true, however.
Because of the lack of numbers, I'm not sure how long it was before running at break-even ceased to be a thing, though.
When the App Store was launched, Steve Jobs said they plan to run it at break-even, no profit, and for quite a few years that was exactly what they did. Now they are profiting from the App Store and clearly could continue to run it as they do on a lower percentage, but I don't think 10% is that number. If they could run it on 10%, they wouldn't have operated it without profit for the first quite-a-few years at 30%!