It appears Apple doesn't make money from apps, apparently they roughly break even from the app store with a 30% cut of apps:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2649475

"...Peter Oppenheimer added, “We run the App Store just a little over breakeven,” implicitly making the case that the App Store was not a big profit generator for the company."

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple_app_store_runs_...

If Apple can't make money from apps, do you think HP can do better? How viable would it be to sell hardware at a major discount and hope to recoup it from apps (as others here have noted)?