Apple Has Its “Best Non-Holiday Quarter Ever.” Best iPhone Sales Ever. | Hacker News Reader

Apple Has Its “Best Non-Holiday Quarter Ever.” Best iPhone Sales Ever.

techcrunch.com

"Oppenheimer: We’re not focused on making a lot of money on the App Store — with the iPad or iPhone. We’re just above break-even."

That's interesting to me: that may explain the desire to keep the App store "clean" and the occasional hurt they put on developers. The App store reels people in; if they aren't making money on it the risks of bad publicity is higher than the risk of losing some apps

I get the feeling the credit care fees eat up a big chunk on their 30% of a $0.99 app.

What's the average number of apps a person buys per month? I wonder if it would be more profitable to batch them to a certain minimum monthly limit (i.e. $3.00), and only charge otherwise if they haven't billed in, say, three months.

they are batched up to some extent. i find i get 2-3 apps appear on each invoice (sometimes more). it only seems to cover a couple of days generally though.

What they want, though, and what makes the iPhone and the iPad so attractive are high quality apps. They might not care about the financial damage of losing a top notch developer, they sure as hell care when that makes iPhones and iPads less attractive.

I think Apple still believes that they can get away with their App store policies because they still are to some degree the only game in town. It will be interesting to see how they will react to Android. We might see their policies change in some shape or form.

What do you mean how they react to Android? Is Android doing something new tomorrow that they haven't been doing for the past few years? So far Apple hasn't had to react to Google in this regard and I haven't seen anything convincing me that will change.

And to clarify, I would LOVE to see Google/Android gain on Apple if only because it will benefit consumers, but so far I've been extremely disappointed. Regardless of some developer drama Apple continues to blow everyone else out of the water.

Extremely true. I have an HTC Hero and I'm pretty disappointed at the partial shittiness of the experience: Very delayed updates, slow UI, and now they HTC has installed a kernel that blocks all rooting attempts. That's exactly the reason I didn't buy an iPhone.

Say what you want, the iPhone works great.

This is one reason why I went for a Nexus One. While other vendors may abuse the freedom Android grants them you can be pretty sure Google is going to keep their flagship phone pure and open and free and also supply it with upgrades.

"Few years"? Android has been out for 17 months, and only really got going with the HTC Hero about 8 months ago.

It will be interesting to see how they will react to Android.

I don't see how Android's marketplace will ever be a threat to Apple's. Just look at the financial incentives: Apple is in the game to make money off the devices and the content royalties. Google is in the game to commoditize the devices that people use to see ads, and Android applications are a complement to those devices. To Apple, the App Store is both itself a source of income and a complement to their primary source of income. To Google, the Android Marketplace as a complement to a complement to their source of income.

Why think that Android is limited to only the Google operated application market? Some other more boutique ones could spring up to fill the "quality and polished" niche, if users want that.

This very thread starts with a quote from Apple saying the App Store is not a source of income for them.

I wonder how many of the high quality, well known apps are running afoul of store policy?

and remember, everyone of those units sold was GSM. No cdma and no EV-DO. I'm not saying it will never happen, but as this GSM-only platform continues to grow, the alternative begins to look less desirable. (and I say this from an area that has EV-DO, but no GSM 3G)

In a few years AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon will be on LTE and Sprint is thinking about it. One protocol to rule them all.

People buy iPhones in Q2? I figured pretty much everyone bought them in the summer so they wouldn't be "obsolete" (ie. not the newest iPhone) almost immediately.

Shows you how attuned your average customer is to release cycles.

My wife just got one this week. We talked about the likelihood of a new phone obsoleting hers in a few months but we decided it wasn't a big deal.

"Cook: We had some staggering growth rates. 474% in Asia Pacific region. 183% growth in Japan. 133% growth in Europe. A lot of this was adding new carrier partners."

hint hint

(hopefully)

Who cares?

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