That’s not an accident, they spent a lot of effort building up their portfolio when this trend was obviously unavoidable. They’d love it if you buy a new phone every year but they’re almost as happy if you keep the same phone for 5 years, buy apps, and subscribe to Apple One. One of the really big questions is what impact the EU DMA will have on this strategy: a lot of what’s kept them ahead of Android on things like CPUs is the geyser of App Store cash stabilizing revenue for long-term commitments.
Interestingly, it was recently revealed that 22% of their services income is comprised of payments from Google to keep their search engine as the default in iOS / Safari. Soon to disappear given the antitrust case.
If this becomes the dominant source of revenues, it makes sense for them to make the phone more repairable and to have a longer lifetime - but then this dominance have to really show, otherwise it is a future revenue instead of a present one.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/382136/quarterly-segment...
That’s not an accident, they spent a lot of effort building up their portfolio when this trend was obviously unavoidable. They’d love it if you buy a new phone every year but they’re almost as happy if you keep the same phone for 5 years, buy apps, and subscribe to Apple One. One of the really big questions is what impact the EU DMA will have on this strategy: a lot of what’s kept them ahead of Android on things like CPUs is the geyser of App Store cash stabilizing revenue for long-term commitments.