Yes, there is a difference between 30% of $1 million (gross revenue) and 30% of $700,000 (profit, if you go by your ridiculous assumption that the developers are not incorporated and had no additional costs.)
Since some people don't get the gist of the point (well they never do really and want to argue just to argue) and want to play actual number games, Apple gets 30% of gross revenue, not net. The actual tax rate for the remaining income (if it were profit) is 35%, not 30% and ignoring deductions and the like for now, that means you owe them $245,000.00. So your net profit margin is actually 45.5%, not 49%. Thus the actual sharing would be 30%, 24.5% and 45.5% rather than 33.3% x 3 as I was implying to make my point (a point that was clearly lost on certain people).
So we are talking 49% net profit margins which is amazing in pretty much any market. Even with your biased assumptions.
Biased assumptions? What makes my assumptions "biased" ? Again, you seem to be confusing a relative point about unfair distribution to specific examples. In other words, you missed the point (as usual).
For comparison, Microsoft's net margins are around 30% and Apple's are around 20%.
Apple is primarily a hardware company. Comparing hardware to software is stupid since the overhead is completely different. In fact, following my "stupid assumptions" earlier, there is no overhead in the example so thus comparing it to companies that do have significant overhead (i.e. Apple is running everything from stores to hardware manufacturing to data centers and corporate headquarters. The "average" app developer (taking into account ALL app developers, not just corporations making apps) is an
individual, not a corporation and thus I fail to see how my assumptions are "stupid" in that regard. In fact, the entire exercise was meant to simply point out that Apple's revenue share of 30% is too high for simply providing a monopolized store environment (as in developers have no other distribution channel/method/outlet save hacking). Slight exaggeration is in order to make that point, not a detailed breakdown of a specific developer's actual net profits. I thus used lower tax rates, but simplified assumptions about revenue because 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 illustrates the point better than 30%, 24.5% and 45.5%. I'm sure a pie chart
would illustrate the point very well, but I didn't feel like making one.
But the idea that 45.5% is an "amazing" rate is clearly just your own personal opinion since the
overwhelming prevailing consensus among polled app developers is against you.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/11/eighty_per_cent_of_devs_think_apple_revenue_split_unfair/
In other words, the real point of my message is in agreement with most app developers feelings whereas your point is to prop up Apple as usual. You keep telling me you're not a fanboy and don't support Apple on everything, but every post you make to me keeps telling me you are indeed a fanboy. I haven't seen you disagree with Apple once...ever.
