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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

I think Apple is probably on the wrong side of anti-trust law on this, but there is certainly a trust benefit (and UX benefit) to a unified payment platform.

The history of mobile/online payments is littered with instances of users being confused/defrauded.

> Users pay for the hardware platform.

This isn't really relevant. Not only is an iPhone worthless without software, but subsidization of hardware by services is very common.

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Isn’t Visa/MasterCard the unified payment platform?

Obviously the iPhone is worthless without software, except it comes with a 1k price tag. Part of that is for the OS. The hardware certainly doesn’t cost that much (comparable offerings from hardware-only manufacturers cost less). This is not a case where the hardware cost is subsidized. Numbers from various sources suggest the iPhone sells for triple the cost of manufacturing.

manufacturing cost != R&D cost

Apple's net sales for Q3 were ~$60B and R&D was ~$5B. No matter how you look at it, the cost of an iPhone far exceeds Apple's cost to produce it.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY20-Q3_Consolidated_Fin...

You’re still neglecting ongoing operational costs, which are neither hardware nor R&D.

But it still doesn’t matter, Apple is profitable, everyone knows that already. It is legal to be profitable, and it is legal to have parts of your business subsidize other parts.

What might not be legal is using a dominant market position to force out competitors.

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