Wouldn't Apple see manufacturing as a cost center? The act of manufacturing costs Apple money, but on its own doesn't generate any revenue. Apple probably sees

Wouldn't Apple see manufacturing as a cost center? The act of manufacturing costs Apple money, but on its own doesn't generate any revenue. Apple probably sees design, marketing, and sales as its profit centers. I don't know about Apple specifically, but some companies I've dealt with view manufacturing as a black box: input design and money, receive widgets in return. Good design enables marketing, and marketing enables sales, so the design->marketng->sales pipeline is viewed as the profit center. A lot of companies, even software companies, see their developers as a similar black box: input ideas and money, receive software you can market and sell. Depending on a company's culture, it can be hard for developers to shift this perception. In some cases, I'm not even sure it is the wrong perception. In SaaS companies, it is easier to tie the work of developers to the revenue it helps generate than in an enterprise software company where selling is going to require a professional, high touch sales force regardless of how good the software is.