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Comment by Negitivefrags | Hacker News Reader

A quick Google suggests Apple made 64 billion from the App Store in 2021 of the 378 billion in total revenue.

Some fairly large peanuts!

And that revenue is basically pure profit as it doesn’t require the creation of any actual physical hardware either.

If not stopped it might eventually get tempting or even logical to phase out making things and focus on rent seeking alone.

The profit is more important than revenue.

Is this pre 30% or after? Also: how much does it cost to run the App Store globally? Do have the numbers?

Edit: Yep, I misread this

> how much does it cost to run the App Store globally? Do have the numbers?

I think that anyone who thought about this for even a second would come to the conclusion of "It almost certainly doesn't cost anywhere near the amount of revenue that comes from it".

So the answer is, probably not a lot, compared to revenue.

I dunno… I figure just the bandwidth costs, not to mention data center/cloud costs, for the constant stream of apps being deployed/updated is pretty significant.

I could expect them to be moving multiple terabytes of data per hour.

Its nothing compared to the piratebay.

Hosting torrents takes minimal bandwidth. Apple can’t offload bandwidth peer to peer to phones when people are on limited cellular plans.

Interesting plot twist you have there. No one at Apple ever actually said that of course but if it was true the distribution was made more expensive by preventing the use of apps on desktop computers.

However, anyone can seed from any system and that lots of people have unlimited plans and/or good wifi.

You could have a static store app with the phone manufacturer providing a feed with names, descriptions, pictures and checksums. Everything else could be distributed over a p2p network. Unpopular apps could be slow to download with the developers server having to patch holes to keep the file alive. Popular apps would have usable numbers to hint at their popularity.

Most apps need internet anyway. (Billing wouldn't be a problem.) I see a thousand pages arguing hosting for an app costs between 70 and 320 per month. I have no idea how true that is or how far apps can live from the average.

It does seem logical to assume with a reasonably smart distribution scheme p2p could also reduce that bill for somewhat more dynamic content.

I'm really impressed by how many useful and fun mobile apps were created. In the 90's I thought nothing was worth using on a mobile device. I was very wrong about that.

I now think it is equally wrong to think the 30% is not dramatically reducing interest in mobile development. Personally I wouldn't touch it with a 6 foot pole. I do web apps that are like websites, they have very limited access to the features of the device.

While I applaud these new regulations it is kinda lame it took them this long.

Remember the uproar when Apple wanted to decentralize CSAM detection?

Imagine how loud the screams would be if they tried to decentralize app distribution.

Ya, maybe they meant this article[0]? If so, then it's 60B going to developers, and some quick math there indicates Apple only made 15B from their cut.

> Apple said Monday that it paid developers $60 billion in 2021, a figure that suggests that App Store sales continue to grow at a rapid clip.

0: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/10/apple-implies-it-generated-r...

15ish billion isn’t profit. They still need to pay credit card fees, do customer service on low value transactions, actually review apps, run data centers etc.

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