00:00 Speaker A
you’ve been following the study. So, what’s the significance of this study?
00:03 Speaker B
Yeah, I mean it basically is showing how much uh the 1.4 trillion uh in sales and billings the uh App Store kind of facilitated. So any kind of, you know, uh uh purchases that people have made across the globe, that’s what that is. It’s not the money that Apple brought into the App Store. I think that would be a a massive story if they did that, but they don’t break out App Store revenue in and of itself. Uh they kind of tuck it in under their uh services segment. Um and for 2025, services, their second largest business by the way brought 109.1 billion of the company’s 416 billion in total revenue, the iPhone, the largest segment, 209.5 billion. I think one of the important things to look at in this is how they broke it down uh by region. And the region that had the highest amount of billings and sales, China. Uh that came in at 562 billion, US 453 billion, Europe 184 billion, Japan 52 billion. But I think it’s just it just goes to show how incredibly important China is to Apple not just on the iPhone sales front, but then on the services front as well.
01:13 Speaker B
They brought in uh I believe they uh saw revenue uh or had commissions on less than 10% of the sales and building. So obviously, you know, point taken. Uh 90% had uh no commissions taken. Um but they still do charge that 30% commission uh on the sale of certain goods. Uh 15% if you’re part of different types of programs, small business programs, things like that subscriptions, it’s 30% for the first year, 15% for the next. Uh they have though faced scrutiny globally as a result of those commissions.
01:49 Speaker A
So, even if they don’t collect commissions, they still make money on the apps that are on the App Store, right?
01:56 Speaker B
It depends, right? I mean, if you’re if you’re going to uh have in app purchases or you’re going to sell, if those commissions get charged, they make that money.
02:08 Speaker A
I mean, do do companies have to apps to have to pay just to be on the App Store? Is there a fee?
02:11 Speaker B
There’s there’s a developer program that you have to sign up for, but it’s not the same as as the commissions and it’s it’s you know, what the companies say is, uh, you know, we have to pay this because we’re using Apple’s payment system, but that’s the only payment system available. Apple on uh in its defense says, look, we’re offering this opportunity to reach all of these people and we have to maintain the App Store, we have to maintain the code that goes along with this, so that’s why we need those commissions. So
02:40 Speaker B
it’s this back and forth, you know, they’ve had to change their commission uh uh uh structure, thank you. uh in certain countries, uh Japan, China, things along those lines. And so it’s been this this continuous back and forth uh tension between Apple and these government bodies and then obviously here in the US. Uh and so we’ll just have to see how this all kind of ends up. But just a note, whatever is going to apply to Apple, will also have to apply to Google.
