> They also host petabytes of apps in hundreds of geographically dispersed and localized app stores So they run a CDN. In the US and Europe, Fastly charges [0]

> They also host petabytes of apps in hundreds of geographically dispersed and localized app stores So they run a CDN. In the US and Europe, Fastly charges [0] a maximum of $0.12/GB. A messaging app like Threema is 41MB and costs 3CHF (~3USD) where I am. That's ~$0.005 for distribution of a $3 app. For a 4GB app (the largest Apple supports), you're paying $0.48 but you're also usually charging on the order of $20 for the app, so this is ~2.5%. Actual bandwidth costs much less. You can buy decent transit for 0.17c/Mbps/month [1] ($0.0005/GB if you max the pipe). > and covers all bandwidth for distributing and updating those apps Let's say incremental updates cost 5% (~2MB) each time and you send them once a month for 10 years. That's 240MB of extra download, for a total bandwidth of 281MB/user. That's $0.0372/user for a $3 app, just over 1%. > And unlike google Apple actually reviews every release of every app by hand, keeping huge amounts of malware off customer devices That primarily benefits Apple. Apple's policies also cost entire classes of apps _100%_ of their revenue, since Apple prohibits them completely. [0]: https://www.fastly.com/pricing https://www.fastly.com/pricing [1]: https://www.ixreach.com/services/promotions/global-10g-transit/ https://www.ixreach.com/services/promotions/global-10g-trans...