That makes it around $3 billion, before taxes and infrastructure expenses, payment deals, etc.
$3 billion is spare change for Apple. They have 200 times than in cash.
As others have mentioned, there are other benefits from native applications, like vendor lock-in, which Apple isn't going to get with web-based applications.
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/28/investing/apple-cash-178-bil...
[2] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/10/20Apple-Reports-Four...
Still, same order of magnitude, and still many times over their app profit.
>Also, I think its telling that Apple themselves mentioned App Store Sales as a main factor in their revenue earnings for Q4 of their 2014 fiscal year.
Telling towards what?
Its telling that App Store sales are a significant source of revenue for Apple. One that could possibly justify not making improvements to Safari that could make it better compete with native applications.