Hacker News Reader

Comment by rimantas | Hacker News Reader

What would I do? I'd continue to make money by selling hardware, which is exactly what Apple does now. Sure, ITMS, App Store provide nice revenue too, but the bulk still comes from hardware.

View on HN

I thought the bulk of apple's sales came from Itunes sales (which includes the app store, music, movie, etc)

http://gizmodo.com/5256604/iphone-application-sales-are-so-t...

According to their latest 10K:

  Mac net sales = 13.7B
  iTunes store net sales* = 4B

  *Consists of iTunes Store sales, iPod services, and Apple-branded and third-party iPod accessories

4B is still nothing to throw out of your bed though, I imagine that the iTunes sales of apps is a much smaller portion of that 4B. I think the lions share would be going to the music and iPod accessories.

Yes, I recall that the actual apps sales cut for Apple is relatively small. Combine that withtheir seeming reluctance to create an app store in the first place (remember in the first year it was all about web apps), I'd say that the app store isn't that high on their priority list. But then again their business model has shifted (marketing iTouch as a game device) so things are probably a bit different

Reply on news.ycombinator.com