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Comment by s3r3nity | Hacker News Reader

Wow - Services grew 27% year-on-year to $10bn! For comparison, AWS made about $6.8bn in Q3.

That's bananas. And it's more than just Apple Music / iCloud storage; it's the "ecosystem lock-in" and the glue that keeps folks from bouncing away from Apple hardware.

Congrats to the team!

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Isn't that increase primarily charging Google more for exclusive search access (e.g. "platform tax")?

http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng...

Apple Music has gotta be a big chunk of the increase. It was at 17 million subscribers in Sep-17 and was at 50 million in May-18 so that's +$1B a quarter right there.

Amazon really missed the boat when they came out with their crappy phone attempt. They could have invested more money and made some decent hardware instead of trying to do something gimmicky. They still haven't really learned though by launching poorly designed Kindle Fires with low res screens that lag a bunch. I wonder how different it would be if Amazon had launched a device like the Pixel as a phone.

Maybe, and this is just a guess, making good hardware isn't actually that easy? Did they hire any pros or did they try to build the knowhow internally?

It really is easy, comparatively speaking with the current Shenzhen ecosystem.

The problem with Amazon is exactly the same as Microsoft had in the 90s. They have no taste, and not in a small way but very big ways.

Services story is amazing. An area Apple could grow is host backend services for the 2M+ app developers out there.

iPhone sales account for just 59% of overall revenue now. That's impressive figure the way Apple is diversifying its business from Hardware-focused to now Services-focused. By comparison, Google Search still accounts for around 86% of its revenues. Well done, Apple!

It depends on what counts as services...

"Congrats to the team" for their effective "ecosystem lock-in"?

Congrats to them for effecting a 30% tax?

"Please sir, may I have another?"

Congrats for actually creating an ecosystem worth using.

...for some people, for some ends.

Yeah, we get it, people who don't use Apple products exist. Not particularly relevant to the discussion though.

It’s still worth noting that apple does not meet every need if people are making carte blanche value statements.

Very true. The comment that started this branch just derailed the conversation by mocking apple developers/users, but if phrased as the first part of your statement, could have been useful discourse.

I think the conversation was derailed plenty by offering congratulations to people for successfully making money.

Yes, I'm long AAPL.

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