Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer stated that "We run the App Store just a little over breakeven" during a shareholder meeting earlier this year. An analyst from Citibank estimated that the App Store would account for $2B in yearly revenue for 2011. Compare that to the $24.67B revenue that Apple had in Q2 of 2011 alone, and that puts the App Store at approximately 2% of Apple's yearly gross revenue. Also, a Trefis analysis of $AAPL puts iTunes and iOS Apps at a combined 4.3% share of the stock's perceived value. While the App Store does provide the ecosystem that allows the iPhone and iPad to thrive, it does not act as a significant revenue source for Apple.
How is 2 billion 2% of 24 billion? It sounds pretty significant to me.
24 billion is quarterly revenue. 2 billion is annual.
I don't see how that invalidates my point in anyway, yes Apple doesn't make a significant proportion of their revenues from their app store, but that doesn't mean that $2 billion dollars of revenue is insignificant in absolute terms.
It is when you are trying to recoup losses form selling hardware below cost. I think App Store revenue last quarter was 1.4 billion. Take out content providers share and you are left with 420 million. This is for the entire store mind you.
HP's fire sale will cost them something like 100 million and it is not as popular as the iPad. Not even Apple could pull something like this off.