<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>Joeri</author><text>So Apple has around one billion customers. When you look at global income distributions there are not that many more people that actually have enough income to afford their products. Practically speaking while they may grow their customer base a bit further, they cannot double it without making far cheaper products or the world’s population becoming a lot more equally distributed income-wise.&lt;p&gt;The consequence of this is that they have to lean into inequality: get their existing high income customers to pay them more money. This is why services are such a good strategy and they are so unwilling to give up on that revenue, and it is also why they are planning to launch very expensive (and therefore high profit) new product categories like vr goggles and cars targeted at their existing customer base.&lt;p&gt;Apple is so ridiculously big that it is fun to map them back onto the world economy. Their yearly revenue is 0.4% of the world economy. Their market cap is 0.6% of global wealth. But that does present a real challenge to Tim Cook to keep growing. If apple doubles again they will be 1% of the world economy. Does that make sense for what amounts to a luxury brand?</text><parent_chain><item><author>paulpan</author><text>I think Apple&amp;#x27;s stubbornness at keeping their commission ~30% underscores how critical that percentage is to their bottom line profitability - both present and future. &amp;quot;Services&amp;quot; is foundational to Tim Cook&amp;#x27;s vision to continue to grow the company and increase its revenue streams.&lt;p&gt;Based on latest Q4 earnings, Services is one of the highest growth segment of Apple at 25% YoY (others being Mac at 25%, Other Products at 13%). As the clamor for M1-based Macs subsides, monetizing its existing 500M+ users is the only major revenue-growth area. But what happens if their commission rate is cut in half to 15%? Apple doesn&amp;#x27;t break out the specific App Store revenue amount or percentage but it must be quite significant.&lt;p&gt;Hence they&amp;#x27;re willing to risk these continued lawsuits and regulatory backlash. The day that Services division no longer reports 20%+ YoY growth could well be one when Apple stock faces the reckoning like FB&amp;#x2F;Meta.</text></item><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>They&amp;#x27;re nuts. All they are doing is setting themselves up for another set of lawsuits.&lt;p&gt;Seriously: Apple should focus on selling hardware and be happy to facilitate those payments that people - and application developers - voluntarily process through their system.&lt;p&gt;All this stupid taxation of other peoples&amp;#x27; businesses should stop, it is anti-competitive behavior that they themselves would never tolerate.&lt;p&gt;Imagine if in the past Apple would have had to pay 30% of their gross to Microsoft in order to be allowed to run their software on Windows.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Apple will charge 27% commission for alternative payment systems in Netherlands</title><url>https://9to5mac.com/2022/02/04/apple-will-charge-27-commission-for-purchases-made-using-alternative-payment-systems-in-the-netherlands/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>908B64B197</author><text>Ironically, this 30% and the pivot to &amp;quot;Service&amp;quot; is why iOS devices get updates after 3 years while Android phones just become paperweights.&lt;p&gt;Android OEM are incentivized to sell as many phones as they can. They only make money on new hardware. Apple on the other hand still makes money on older hardware as long as the user still buy from the ecosystem. So it makes sense for them to keep the products working longer.</text><parent_chain><item><author>paulpan</author><text>I think Apple&amp;#x27;s stubbornness at keeping their commission ~30% underscores how critical that percentage is to their bottom line profitability - both present and future. &amp;quot;Services&amp;quot; is foundational to Tim Cook&amp;#x27;s vision to continue to grow the company and increase its revenue streams.&lt;p&gt;Based on latest Q4 earnings, Services is one of the highest growth segment of Apple at 25% YoY (others being Mac at 25%, Other Products at 13%). As the clamor for M1-based Macs subsides, monetizing its existing 500M+ users is the only major revenue-growth area. But what happens if their commission rate is cut in half to 15%? Apple doesn&amp;#x27;t break out the specific App Store revenue amount or percentage but it must be quite significant.&lt;p&gt;Hence they&amp;#x27;re willing to risk these continued lawsuits and regulatory backlash. The day that Services division no longer reports 20%+ YoY growth could well be one when Apple stock faces the reckoning like FB&amp;#x2F;Meta.</text></item><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>They&amp;#x27;re nuts. All they are doing is setting themselves up for another set of lawsuits.&lt;p&gt;Seriously: Apple should focus on selling hardware and be happy to facilitate those payments that people - and application developers - voluntarily process through their system.&lt;p&gt;All this stupid taxation of other peoples&amp;#x27; businesses should stop, it is anti-competitive behavior that they themselves would never tolerate.&lt;p&gt;Imagine if in the past Apple would have had to pay 30% of their gross to Microsoft in order to be allowed to run their software on Windows.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Apple will charge 27% commission for alternative payment systems in Netherlands</title><url>https://9to5mac.com/2022/02/04/apple-will-charge-27-commission-for-purchases-made-using-alternative-payment-systems-in-the-netherlands/</url></story>