🤙 Takeoff #18: Apple's secret revenue stream, flourishing India, master consumer decision making and much more..
Welcome to Takeoff, our community newsletter that serves you a weekly appetizing plate of insightful information and resources
💸 Apple's secret revenue stream
Apple is always in the news, whether through its innovative products or sometimes through the controversies which grapple it. A few months back, Apple had a tough cutthroat battle with Facebook (Meta) which cost Meta a major chunk of its revenue. Apple released an update asking permission to track users’ behaviour across Apple’s App store and the internet. That was a huge blow to Meta, whose main business revolves around targeting ads to users whether they know about it or not. Apple’s move changed the trajectory for Meta, but Apple continued doing their business and making billions of dollars of revenue as usual.
A few days back, Apple got into one more dispute with Twitter. Apple threatened to remove Twitter from the app store without providing a solid reason. Experts suggest that it can be due to the reason as Elon Musk is reinstating banned Twitter accounts. Everyone is aware of how stringent and intact Apple is against hate speech practices, and they feel the change in the content moderation policies by Elon Musk can be vulnerable to that. Due to that, Elon Musk got no chill and turned over a new leaf about Apple’s “secret 30% tax”. He criticised the company’s alleged monopoly and called out the tax it levied on app store purchases publicly.
Let's break this down. Is it really a tax a secret tax that Apple charges? To be honest, it’s not. In reality, Apple is not the only company taking a cut in in-app purchase revenues. Google Play, Amazon App store and Microsoft Store also charge commissions for apps and in-app purchases. But the developer community always fights against this and doesn’t find this acceptable. Who likes paying taxes in this world? Probably no one, right? But Apple actually justifies the price they are charging.
Here’s how.
So, Apple helps the developer community in various things lik payment clearing, fraud protection, indemnity, and insurance and doesn’t make any compromise in terms of security and privacy. Against these services, they are earning billions of dollars in revenue every year.
What do you think? Is this fee justifiable?
📖 An interesting article for your tranquil Sunday afternoon
Why everyone should pay more attention to India...
This week, we came across an article where the author talks about the hidden talent potential of India and she believes that the best opportunities would be coming from India itself in the future.
🧐 Food for thought
Learn - do - learn again!!
💫 A recent discovery we found fascinating
This week, we came across this insightful thread on some of the coginitive biases that can help us master consumer decision making.
✨ Signing off with some wisdom
"Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action." - Benjamin Disraeli
That’s it for now, folks. Thank you so much for reading this week’s edition. If you had even a little fun reading this edition, we’ve done our work!
See you next weekend.
Until then..