Roger Fingas
Google's payments to remain the default search option on Apple devices like iPhones and iPads may be set to slow down, a report hinted on Friday.
Google's parent company, Alphabet, is telling investors that it expects the traffic acquisition costs it pays to partners like Apple to begin slowing this year, the Wall Street Journal said. While there are no public numbers on how much Apple receives, at least one estimate has pegged the sum for 2017 at over $3 billion.
In a Wednesday filing with the U.S. Securties and Exchange Commission, Apple flagged licensing fees like Google's as the main driver of its 31 percent growth in services revenue year-over-year. Google's money is often thought to be the biggest contributor to that segment.
In some ways Google is effectively captive to Apple, since it depends on iPhone and to a lesser extent iPad and Mac traffic to fuel its core advertising business. Apple would likely disappoint some users if it switched to another default search option, but it isn't beholden.
The reason for the slower growth in payments isn't clear at present.
The company dropped Google from Apple Maps with 2012's iOS 6, aiming to distance itself from a key rival in the smartphone space and — at the time — a legal opponent. The result was catastrophic in the short term, since the replacement map data contained missing or mislabeled items, and lacked any public transit directions.
Apple pulled in $9.19 billion in services revenue in the March quarter, an increase from $7 billion a year ago. The segment includes the App Store, Apple Pay, Apple Music, and iCloud storage, but Google's money is unique in that it's essentially pure profit, with little to no support costs for Apple.
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
22 Comments
I suspect what they are really saying is TAC as a percentage of revenues will decrease rather than the actual dollar amount dropping. Not entirely clear tho so perhaps they'll explain it in more depth at some point.
DuckDuckGo works just fine; google free forever.
It was just Tuesday, May 1, 2028, Tim Cook resoundly refuted the dire news the Wall Street Journal had been reporting about iPhone X. Now the paper has decided to target Apple’s services revenue in yet another attempt at drumming fear, uncertainty and doubt. Thankfully the honest news of Warren Buffett’s purchase of 75 million more Apple shares is having a very positive effect on Apple’s share price today.
Apple should acquire DDG and give them unlimited funds to execute on their mission. Their CEO has the best response I’ve ever seen on Quora. And then when an iPhone user updates their phone and opens Safari a splash screen should give users a choice of search engines to select from, putting DDG in a very prominent position, where Apple can claim the annonmous ad income and remove Google from their defecto position. Unlike Facebook and Google, Duck-Duck doesn’t build profiles on individuals—their software is purposefully designed not to.