For whatever reason, of the people who are into vinyl these days, only a vanishingly small proportion are into classical on vinyl. Far, far less than the proportion of people who bought that classical vinyl in the first place. So there's essentially no market for it. Record stores will generally buy only specific rare/historical/mint classical LP's, in contrast to how they'll buy anything by Bob Dylan.
I'm not sure why -- curious if anyone knows. The two obvious theories are that buying LP's is a "hipster" thing and hipsters aren't into classical, or else that classical listeners are always looking for the highest fidelity and vinyl ain't it. After all, it's classical listeners who have long traded FLAC files rather than MP3's.
I assume recordings themselves are cheaper because of the reasons listed in the comment above.
That said - because most classical streaming services are really bad there's still a very active market for CDs in classical music, and because the production costs of making new recordings are VERY high (and there is a still a demand for them) it's a really weird market because you've got older catalogue available for rock bottom prices, and newly made recordings at pretty high prices. Hardcore classical music fans are completionists and so if there's a new recording that fills a gap in their library they are often pretty price insensitive.
When I worked adjacent to classical I was often given box sets of new releases. I noticed that one of those (which I still have - and which originally released at around $120) was recently sold on a second hand marketplace I follow for a ridiculous amount of money (hundreds of dollars) because it was on sale for a weirdly short time so you can only get it second hand.
How does that square with Apple wanting to put the music from this label in an app? Upsells to collectible media?
If you can get those folk to see the value of Apple Music, and they have an Apple TV (I bet there's a strong crossover here) and get them onto Apple One family plan, then you get kids/other family members using Apple Music.
So taking classical makes a lot of sense.
But yes, there's potentially also a physical side to it. I'm assuming that if Apple starts acquiring classical labels they will pretty much let them continue to operate as a record label - but with the luxury of perhaps not having to worry quite so much about top line economics.
Not a classical label, but another "premium" label I'm friendly with did a limited edition boxset of a particular artist and sold 1000 copies at about $400 - $500 a shot in under 12 hours. So doing premium releases is big money - but also very costly to manufacture, and when people are paying that sort of money they expect a REALLY great unboxing experience. Which, I guess, kind of aligns with what Apple does elsewhere.