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> Apple invests every day to ensure the App Store remains a safe and trusted place for users to find great apps. Last quarter, gross margins on "Services" reve
by lapcat 9mo ago
> Apple invests every day to ensure the App Store remains a safe and trusted place for users to find great apps.
Last quarter, gross margins on "Services" revenue were 75%. The App Store is almost pure profit, with relatively little investment.
See also: https://www.apple.com/app-store/ https://www.apple.com/app-store/ "Every week, nearly 500 dedicated experts around the world review over 130K apps." Astonishingly, Apple appears to be bragging about these numbers, but if you do the math, 500 reviewers working 40 hours per week doing nothing except reviewing apps—no training, no meetings, no breaks, etc.—must spend an average of less than 10 minutes on each submission, to review the app and the App Store metadata (text, screenshots, etc.) for conformance with all guidelines, not only safety but also, more importantly to Apple, it seems, ensuring that the app doesn't somehow avoid giving Apple its cut of revenue. Not to mention that the salary of 500 reviewers is basically a drop in the bucket compared to App Store revenue.
- dhruv3006 9mo agoI wonder why the competitors are behind. Samsung has profits in the similar range right?
- ndr42 9mo agoAt least a human spends 10 Minutes with the app... less with updates.
- lapcat 9mo ago> At least a human spends 10 Minutes with the app Less than 10 minutes > less with updates How do you know?
- nixass 9mo ago> Apple invests every day to ensure the App Store remains a safe and trusted place This should read as "to ensure the App Store remains a walled garden not letting their users to own devices they paid fat money for"
- jjtheblunt 9mo agoYou can't tell how many software systems are evaluating app submissions though, before apps which pass might enter a queue for human evaluations.
- lapcat 9mo agoNeither can you. ;-) The page does say, "100% of apps are automatically screened for known malware," but that's also true of Mac app notarization, which costs the developer only the $99 per year developer program fee.
- jjtheblunt 9mo agoYep. I'm quite sure we're saying and noting the same thing.
- fra 9mo agoGross margin doesn't tell you much about their level of investment. Gross margin is only revenue minus COGS (i.e. hosting, support, potentially infra teams). To understand further investments you'd have to know R&D or at least Opex broken out for Apple Services (which AFAIK they do not share). SaaS typically expects 80% gross margin, so Apple is not out of line here.
- lapcat 9mo ago> To understand further investments you'd have to know R&D or at least Opex broken out for Apple Services (which AFAIK they do not share). Total R&D for the entire corporation was $9 billion compared to $29 billion just in Services revenue. How much of that R&D do you think the crApp Store needs, compared to the hardware and the operating systems? https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/fy2025-q4/FY25_Q4_Consolidated_Financial_Statements.pdf https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/fy2025-q4/FY25_Q4_Consol... > SaaS typically expects 80% gross margin, so Apple is not out of line here. App Store is essentially an online retailer (or consignment store), not SaaS. Apple is selling software written by other developers.
- egypturnash 9mo agoMy spouse tried out for the people who sub-contract the app store reviewing and it was very much as you surmise, they require you to do a very oddly specific number of reviews in an hour (29, IIRC) and do not pay very well. Pay and time per review might have gotten better if he'd stuck with it and climbed to a similar level as his previous position in a mapping company but we are not at that level of desperation yet.
- lapcat 9mo ago> they require you to do a very oddly specific number of reviews in an hour (29, IIRC) You mean during the interview process? In any case, 29 per hour sounds... extreme.
- egypturnash 9mo agoNo, this is once you get accepted. It might have been 19, I'm pretty sure it was a two-digit number ending with a 9.
- knowitnone3 9mo agoApple invests every day to ensure the App Store is the ONLY place for users to find great apps.
- cyberax 9mo agoWe have the receipts. It typically takes Apple around a minute of in-app time to do the review. And you need to pay 30% of your income for that.