If I were Apple and Google, I would be seriously considering what new revenue stream could replace app store revenue entirely.
As an Android dev I'm growing tiresome of this "Google doesn't restrict anything" argument.
The number of Android users that even know what f-droid is is less than 1%.
The Play Store is the only option.
This is unlike how Apple does things where they literally block your app from running on your customer's devices unless you get Apple's approval (and pay them), and there's no option whatsoever to cut them out of that process.
Anecdotally, have seen a few positions for their internal ad tech team; and have been pinged a couple of times by recruiters.
1. Privacy makes them a lot of money right now; it's a huge part of their brand, and one the CEO talks about frequently.
2. Media coverage of Apple Intelligence talks a lot about how privacy is a core differentiator for Apple's AI approach compared to Google, Microsoft, or OpenAI. Apple's approach is on-device-by-default approach, going as far as to have an explicit opt-in per interaction if you want to talk to chatGPT.
3. Apple clearly spent a lot of time and money on their "private cloud compute" approach to larger server models -- why would they immediately squander that by switching to ad-tech.
4. If they were going to use that treasure trove of information, why would they spend so much time not doing that in the lead-up to their big launch of Apple Intelligence?
5. Apple has spent a lot of effort making that personal local context local-only, and designing APIs and training models on schemas for apps to provide local context & local actions to local Siri. That's part of their killer feature set.
Ad tech team doesn't really require any of this data. That's an entirely different business model, and Apple is a lucrative business because they didn't do what Google did.
It all comes down to this: Apple spent the past decade plus building up a brand based on privacy, and spending a lot of extra time, money, and effort doing things more privately than their competitors. It's now a compelling differentiator for Apple, and I have a lot of trouble seeing why they would squander a reputation they clearly spent a lot of energy building.
> Privacy makes them a lot of money right now
Most users do not care about privacy. They care about price and convenience.
It’s a bit moot without surveying users, and I’m sure those surveys exist somewhere. But I don’t accept at face value that users don’t care about privacy.
> why are they buying iPhones?
Of course that will still cut into their unfair monopoly profits. But they can likely maintain a huge chunk.
1) Write an Android wrapper and integrate it to Xcode so swift/SwiftUI can run normally on Android
2) Release the App Store for Android, with full App Store purchase/subscription support
They could collect a TON of revenue on the Android platform doing this, and most developers would opt to re-release their iOS apps on Android to save on dev costs.