3 ms·

While I'm no flash fanboy, I will say that the crux is dead on. Apple is all about razor blades.. They'll sell you a iPhone or an iPod and the find a way to e

by koblas 18y ago

While I'm no flash fanboy, I will say that the crux is dead on. Apple is all about razor blades.. They'll sell you a iPhone or an iPod and the find a way to extract lots of small dollars from the sale of music or applications for your device. Putting a full featured version of flash on the device would be a trivial way to avoid the Apple store, load your Kongregate (or other casual app core) then you've got access to that whole development community and disenfranchise Apple in the process. Right now as long as you're shopping the isles of wallmart (oh, Apple.com) for your applications they can insure that you get no free stuff and have to pay for everything, thus controlling the pipe and the revenue.

mattmaroon 18y ago
It's actually not the razorblade model. It used to be the exact opposite. Apple made their profit off of the razor (iPod) and gave the blades away. It was the reverse razor-blade model. Some people think they're now profiting off of both, which is incredible.
tlrobinson 18y ago
I don't think that's really true. Apple makes more money on hardware than anything else. The iTunes Store helps sell more iPods, not as much the other way around. I think Apple's decision to require all iPhone apps be sold through the iTunes Store is partially a matter of control. If an app is malicious or misbehaves, they can easily pull it.
- koblas 18y ago
  It might be true, tried to find the gross revenue per unit for an iPod (unable to). However, during my investigation I did find this interesting blog post. http://daringfireball.net/2008/01/aapl_q1_2008 The author makes a few interesting notes about Apples Q1: * Mac sales and iPhone sales were equal * The gross revenue per iPod was $181 Also, apple made $808M on iTunes. There is one interesting bit of foretelling in the post (written 5 months ago) The market for third-party software for the iPhone and iPod Touch is already big, and I expect that by this time two years from now, there will be more iPhones/iPod Touches in use than Macs. (Imagine the unit sale numbers for a $199 iPhone two years from now.)

by koblas 18y ago

mattmaroon 18y ago

It's actually not the razorblade model. It used to be the exact opposite. Apple made their profit off of the razor (iPod) and gave the blades away. It was the reverse razor-blade model. Some people think they're now profiting off of both, which is incredible.

tlrobinson 18y ago

I don't think that's really true. Apple makes more money on hardware than anything else. The iTunes Store helps sell more iPods, not as much the other way around. I think Apple's decision to require all iPhone apps be sold through the iTunes Store is partially a matter of control. If an app is malicious or misbehaves, they can easily pull it.

koblas 18y ago
It might be true, tried to find the gross revenue per unit for an iPod (unable to). However, during my investigation I did find this interesting blog post. http://daringfireball.net/2008/01/aapl_q1_2008 The author makes a few interesting notes about Apples Q1: * Mac sales and iPhone sales were equal * The gross revenue per iPod was $181 Also, apple made $808M on iTunes. There is one interesting bit of foretelling in the post (written 5 months ago) The market for third-party software for the iPhone and iPod Touch is already big, and I expect that by this time two years from now, there will be more iPhones/iPod Touches in use than Macs. (Imagine the unit sale numbers for a $199 iPhone two years from now.)