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Comment by baxtr | Hacker News Reader

Apple sells some ads yes. But it’s a tiny fraction of their revenue.

Would Google or Meta go bankrupt if they stopped selling ads? Yes. Apple wouldn’t.

As long as you don’t count the $25 billion that Apple gets from Google.

I was wondering why Apple bought an identity clone patent that would wreck targeted ads and never used it. Maybe it’s a $25 billion insurance policy.

Are you suggesting that is what is keeping Apple afloat?

No. But guess how much their stock would drop if one quarter they lost 20% of their profit?

No doubt.

Apple would go bankrupt without US protectionist policy propping up their service revenue.

That's pretty bad. Maybe not "reliant on ad monopoly" bad, but pretty close.

That seems like a stretch. Even in Europe where people can choose to use different app stores, few people actually do. So few, in fact, that one of the alternative app stores recently shut down.

Have you considered that people just like Apple's products and services?

In their revenue report this week out of $140B, services made up 30B. 140B-30B = 110B. Thats pretty far from bankruptcy.

And that was just one quarter…

Run 12 quarters, for all I care. Service revenue accounts for more than 50% of Apple's YoY revenue growth: https://www.statista.com/chart/14629/apple-services-revenue/

Hardware sales aren't picking up the slack, and advertisement revenue is also following a growth trend. Apple's stock would indeed be cooked if they went balls-out against the government that guarantees them access to cheap hardware and software that has been declared illegally anti competitive by foreign sovereigns. Apple needs this.

Elaborate? Financial results say otherwise.

What does whether they’d go bankrupt or not have to do with whether they’re an ad company?

They sell third party ads: companies unaffiliated with Apple pay Apple to advertise on Apple platforms.

They’re an ad company. Just because it’s currently a small slice of their total revenue doesn’t make it untrue.

What matters is that the parent comment said “Apple is an ad company now,” as if that negated all the privacy and security stuff they do.

Making some cash on ads doesn’t have to rely on targeted tracking. That only matters if ads are an existential part of your business, and without huge ad revenue growth, your company is dead.

I guess it’s also a financial company, since they have a branded credit card?

I mean if you don’t care about details that’s fine I guess. Let’s call any company that sells and/or buys any amount of ads an "ad company". Let’s put them all into one bucket and judge. That’s super valuable.

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