That’s because they tried integration with the rest of their SW ecosystem.
If they just did motherboards with cpu/ram/pcie and let other OEMs build complete systems the story would be very different
If they just did motherboards with cpu/ram/pcie and let other OEMs build complete systems the story would be very different
All the capacity at all the fabs is booked up for years. They can’t make more if they want to.
So any hypothetical sales of OEM style guts would only cut into the number of Macs they can sell to existing customers. And there’s no way they would ever do that.
Higher margins?
42 people with iPhone will buy airpods, some subscriptions and apps. They also be vendor locked into Apple ecosystem and almost guaranteed to bring more iPhone sale in 3 years.
Apple must be dumb to canibalize their own market.