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Thanks for pointing this out. App Store sales (not profit) for 2020 was estimated at around $64B. Apple apparently does not make the profits from the App Store public.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/apples-app-store-had-gross-s...



In 2019, their App Store profit margin was roughly 80%[1].

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-01/apple-s-a...


Since that $64 billion is gross revenue, their profit margin is trivially less than 30%, since they have to pay out 70+% to developers.


I wouldn't be surprised if it was 99% profit. Operating a glorified FTP service isn't going to dent $64B in revenues.


A glorified FTP service with an army of moderators. Still good margins I would suspect, but not just passive income.


How big is their "army" of app store moderators?


From my own experiences and plenty of others their so called moderators are crap. App Store review process is total bullshit most of the time, and yet they still end up with scam/trash apps on the store.

Besides, how many app updates are there per day? The amount they pay an app reviewer x n reviewers is going to be _nothing_, a drop in the bucket of what they make from the app store overall.

App Store is a cash cow so they'll protect it viciously; I expect Apple will win this one through their usual gaslighting/cult personalities unless EU is willing to come down hard enough on 'em. Ban sales of Apple products that do not conform, easy.

It doesn't affect consumers in any negative way, only positive.




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