The same for an App Store. It , like a store, provides access to a customer base in exchange for a fee.
You are thinking in terms of customer base. That is just potential. Look man you can have very large stores with huge customer base, yet a store with a smaller customer base sell much more. Its not that uncommon.
Its the ability of a store to sell that matters not the customer base.
Now within this, the App Store there is no competition hence nothing to directly compare with in terms of sales ability.
Take Fortnite for instance. There is no doubt in my mind that it would sell well in iOS as it sold in other platforms. The App Store is fundamentally there collecting revenue share in iOS market, banking on the success of the dev world wide after licenses and devices.
In App I find it very difficult to believe it’s the App Store converting the lead into a sale. It’s a bit like considering thinking that it’s Continente that sell Apple Music on the iPhone. It’s more akin to a ransomware device rather than an active sale device.
Given this all possible comparisons are indirect.
PS: What old way. The only difference to prior art is that the iPhone devices sold like cup cakes and the App Store was the only way to acquire, install and update apps. What made Apple was the iPhone and the flock of third party Apps not the App Store. Back than was fundamentally a green field starving for Apps. In effect the devs contribute a lot to iOS popularity. Take for instance Windows Phone that basically was “boicot” by devs and boom down the drain of irrelevance.
Take for instance the HomePod … a device Apple built for its services only … at failed to acquire scale … no third party devs bringing in their creation … no mega device sales …
Why it was “boicot” … well here are the devs in a similar position with a different player.
Anyway will see how this unfolds.
PS: The rest of your argument is extrapolating from certain similarities that it’s the same thing. While ignoring fundamental differences that do not fit the narrative. If you want to proceed like that … do not have much to add to what I’ve written. Now, if you want to compare businesses as a whole … better look at the differences in practice … and imagine how it would like transposed to Continente, ISP, Worten, … Apple would not exist in such a world.
