How does Apple do in software sales?

tspencer83tspencer83
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Hey everyone, I was just curious as to how Apple does in its software sales. Namely, Final Cut, Motion, Soundtrack, etc... It seems like Apple has released quite a few new and upgraded software packages and I was wondering whether they were starting to see some serious return off of software. Thanks.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    electric monkelectric monk Posts: 485member
    Apple is fundamentally a hardware company. Nowadays it's a mix of iPods and various Mac hardware. Software is generally used to push sales of more/newer/faster hardware.



    I've heard that they spent a billion dollars on Mac OS X (10.0 I think, but it could have been to get to 10.1 or 10.2). There is no way in hell they've made that back, but it does explain their practice of charging for 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, and so on.



    As for other software sales: iLife is given away a lot of the time. I'd say they're running at a loss, or a small profit if enough people upgrade.



    Pro apps on the other hand probably do make them money given that they generally have compelling new features that pro's can use and as such they probably see a high adoption rate.



    I don't have any hard numbers though, so I could easily be off.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    pbg4 dudepbg4 dude Posts: 1,611member
    The Q2'05 report shows income of $239M from software sales.
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