Apple denies App Store profit margin is 75% – claims to have no clue • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple denies App Store profit margin is 75% – claims to have no clue

#61

Post by andrejguran » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 4:07 PM UTC

pretext-1 wrote: post #60

I typically don’t argue in favor of big corporations but I believe them, kind of. Apple includes a lot of things into their SDKs for free, which are paid on Google's platform. For example Apple Maps, Apple Weather, etc. components are all free and can be extremely expensive on Android (Google charging per view for Google Maps, for example). That is of course if you use these things in your app.

they could still calculate their profit margin: cost to build all their free SDK / profit from app store. Seems quite simple. Why would you believe them that they are not able to perform this calculation?

Re: Apple denies App Store profit margin is 75% – claims to have no clue

#62

Post by johnisgood » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 9:00 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #15

johnisgood wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood the practice of it. It makes no sense to me.

A leftover from cultures where everyone supposedly always does the right thing.

Supposedly. :P

I think it was always naive.

Re: Apple denies App Store profit margin is 75% – claims to have no clue

#63

Post by tonyedgecombe » Sun, Jan 19, 2025, 1:48 PM UTC

rahimnathwani wrote: post #41

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed Apple's margin was 30%, the difference between what a user pays and what the developer receives. Am I missing something here?

Am I missing something here? You are assuming Apple is a reseller (whose revenue is the full price paid by the end buyer) rather than an agent (whose revenue is only their commission). You are also ignoring the app store's advertising revenue. And you're assuming that it costs zero to run the app store.

>You are assuming Apple is a reseller (whose revenue is the full price paid by the end buyer) rather than an agent (whose revenue is only their commission).

This isn't an unreasonable assumption, especially considering the invoice for my last App Store purchase has an Apple address and tax identifier (VAT number). Apple is the merchant of record.