Once they started with the App Store revenue and especially taking a cut on all transactions, they were locked in. It's a public company so number must always go up. If number doesn't go up, executives are gone and replaced with people who will make number go up. That means it's impossible for them to back out of the App Store revenue channel. They'll have to be forced out by government action, in which case they can write it off as unavoidable and appease the shareholders and maybe not be replaced.
The basic principle here is that when a company takes on a revenue stream, it becomes addicted to it and it's incredibly difficult to give that revenue stream up even if it's destructive to other aspects of the company or brand. This is very closely related to the innovators' dilemma. In fact that might be seen a special case of the same failure mode.
If Apple ever goes really into advertising, that'll really be the end of them as a good brand. Advertising revenue destroys everything it touches. It's possible that they could recover from this debacle but a pivot into ads is the end.
The issue for Apple is that their hardware business is slowing down due to market saturation. Their recent attempt at growth into a new hardware market (Vision Pro) seems like a huge dud. Their last successful new product was the Watch which at about 100 million sales in total is only half of a single year’s iPhone sales (and likely less profitable).
Focus on not slaughtering their golden goose. Public companies absolutely do not need to grow revenue and many industries remain in states of decline for decades. However, lack of growth means the stock option party is over for employees.
They've tried becoming a bank (or banking reseller at least) with Apple Card which now has savings accounts and such. They're also apparently doing some AI work that could be interesting. But yeah, this is the real issue. Number must always go up and mobile is a saturated market now.
They should do more acquisitions. Buy Anthropic for starters. Absolute no brainer. Make Claude the new Siri and roll out powerful on-device models too.
More acquisitions? Why? They're already a $3 trillion company. As parent comments say, they have saturated the market, maxed out the app store at the expense of good will, and are engaged in a duopoly spiral with Alphabet. How long will "number go up"? Until the planet is piled up to space in paperclips?
And ads is the one line of business that is growing.
All of the privacy and app tracking restrictions conveniently relate to them having all of the tracking data and third parties not having it. Your data is "private", to everyone except Apple.
This is the reason Apple is violently opposing any software coming from sources they don't control.
The way the DMA was written is a convoluted joke. It could have been a lot simpler: hardware device makers shouldn't be able to block third party software. A more extreme case could prevent companies over a certain size from manufacturing hardware and the operating system.
Then Apple would simply say they are not blocking third party software from their hardware (iPhones), they are just blocking it from running on their software (iOS).
Making a law is inherently a messy job, if you think you can replace a 100 page document with 100 words, there's a good chance you are overlooking a lot of complexity.
Dunno why you are being downvoted. Regardless of what one thinks of Apple charging 30% tax on their dominion, the fact that it's now become a sort of dependency is correct.
Governments have the same problem. Once you start taxing, it becomes hard to give up the revenue stream.
Once they started with the App Store revenue and especially taking a cut on all transactions, they were locked in. It's a public company so number must always go up. If number doesn't go up, executives are gone and replaced with people who will make number go up. That means it's impossible for them to back out of the App Store revenue channel. They'll have to be forced out by government action, in which case they can write it off as unavoidable and appease the shareholders and maybe not be replaced.
The basic principle here is that when a company takes on a revenue stream, it becomes addicted to it and it's incredibly difficult to give that revenue stream up even if it's destructive to other aspects of the company or brand. This is very closely related to the innovators' dilemma. In fact that might be seen a special case of the same failure mode.
If Apple ever goes really into advertising, that'll really be the end of them as a good brand. Advertising revenue destroys everything it touches. It's possible that they could recover from this debacle but a pivot into ads is the end.