Comment by a123b456c
25 days ago
Actually, they sell lots of ads in the app store. I will not be surprised if they sell video ads, display ads or search ads in the future. They could earn tens of billions in revenue per year; the main business question is how that trades off against the various downsides of advertising sales.
Apple generated $416 billion in total net sales in 2025. Of that total, $307 billion (about 74% of total revenue) came directly from their hardware ecosystem. The services segment generated the remaining $109 billion (26%); including their advertising platforms, AppleCare, cloud services, and Apple TV...
Seems like their advertising might not be a focus...
When you’re that big, it’s all a focus. Keeping the growth going is job 1 and you need all cylinders firing to do it.
services are growing 10%+ per year
"Services" includes everything from iCloud storage to AppleCare to Apple Card to Apple Music & Apple TV subscriptions.
Services growth is only tracking slightly ahead of installed base growth. One theory of Services was that it would grow high-margin business organically alongside the growth of the installed base. More iPhone users => more iCloud subscriptions. Notably, this growth rate is roughly predictable even without ads being a factor.
The News app is also spammed full of shitty-looking ads.