Phil Schiller, Apple Fellow and former marketing chief, has testified in an antitrust case that he doesn’t know whether the App Store is profitable. He stated that he never considered the return on investment when launching the App Store. Schiller also mentioned that he doesn’t receive reports on ‘profit’ as a specific financial metric and it’s not how the team measures their performance. The team carefully watches and manages metrics like billings, accounts, and subscriptions.
Schiller further explained that the company doesn’t record minutes of meetings between senior executives. This practice was initiated by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs who felt that meeting notes were unnecessary. This has led to very few written records of decisions made around the launch of the store.
The court battle between Apple and Epic Games ended in the US when the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. However, an identical case is being heard in Australia, where Apple is again being accused of using its monopoly control over the sale of iPhone apps to maximize its own profits at the expense of developers.
During the cross-examination, Schiller was asked about the profitability of the App Store and whether any investigation was conducted into what stream of revenue would be produced by imposing a commission of 30 percent. To this, Schiller responded that he believes the App Store is profitable, but he doesn’t know how much money it makes. He also confirmed that no specific financial measures such as forecast profitability were looked at when deciding to charge a commission rate of 30 percent.
Read more at: 9to5mac.com