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0 pointspwinnski5y ago0 comments

What evidence do you have that a 10% fee is enough to operate the App Store at the scale Apple does?

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%!

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ac295y ago· 1 in thread

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).

pwinnskiOP5y ago

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.

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