Right, yeah. There's just so many unknowns when it comes to "how profitable are App Stores" that any conversation about it is seriously pointless. Like, I don't

Right, yeah. There's just so many unknowns when it comes to "how profitable are App Stores" that any conversation about it is seriously pointless. Like, I don't even want to guess; I refuse to believe that iOS is more profitable than Android, because I'm not even sure if that's the right question. All the data we have on global/domestic smartphone shipments, active users, monthly actives, daily actives, dollars spent, ruples spent, per app category, minus games, fiscal/calendar quarterly, it all comes from these dodgy "Global Insights" app consulting firms. You head to Google and search "App Store Quarterly Revenue" and you find a different Statista or BusinessOfApps or whatever site each quarter, all their data just linear extrapolations from active pings from trackers they pay apps to install which are increasingly getting blocked by OS security controls. Google and Apple almost never share explicit data (this Epic trial has been a nice departure from that, to be fair); if they share anything, its an overtly generalized market segment like "Services", which of course they're using to inflate the apparent revenue of bad business divisions they want to look good by combining them with the actually good divisions (same reason why Microsoft put Azure in the same shareholder-reported category as Office early on; of course, nowadays, its amazing on its own). And then, re-read that last paragraph and realize I said "Google & Apple" and you didn't even blink. Sure, Google & Apple, that's who we're talking about. No; we're talking about Android & iOS. Android; that operating system that has unlocked computing for the entire world, including vast swaths of people who can barely afford plumbing and electricity, that's side-loaded and hacked to the ends of the earth, that's startlingly popular and preloaded with hardware-specific storefronts in countries that, traditionally, don't like sharing data with the west. Sure, "your" app was more profitable per-install on iOS than Android. An excellent, informative experiment. The assertion is that iOS has "special sauce" that makes consumers money-drunk, and they spend more. Did we control for income disparity? Surprise; No. Did we aggregate a broad swath of consumer application categories, including (especially) gaming, as gaming is by-far the largest source of consumer application spending, globally? Surprise; No. How's this sound: People spend a shit-ton of money in apps. This fact, alone, is reason enough that letting a single company gatekeep the experience for any significant number of people is unacceptable. Justifying Apple's monopoly by saying they're better at making consumers money-drunk is psychotic.