How so? The comment I was replying to was calling 30% unnecessary/unreasonable. However, that's quite the relative statement, no? If (with an obviously fake example) 30% allowed them to break even, who would call that unreasonable?

I feel like the idea of what is reasonable or not is entirely dependent on how much profit they're making. For ease of discussion, I think it would be very reasonable if customer costs reflected operational costs. Ie, sell the phone for just a bit over phone costs (including R&D/etc), sell iCloud for a bit over operating costs, sell App Store usage for a bit over operating costs, etc.

All of that would be very reasonable, no? So what is reasonable and what is not reasonable seems entirely to do with how much profit they're turning. Which of course, as my question asks, is nearly impossible to understand from the outside.