It Costs Apple $1.3 Billion A Year To Run iTunes & Other Great iTunes Stats

An analysis based on data released recently by Apple pegs the cost of running on the iTunes store at $1.3 billion per year. "Since we know something about the average price of songs and apps, and we know the split between developers and Apple (and roughly between music labels and Apple)," according to the new Asympco report, "we can get a rough estimate of the amount Apple retains to run its store." The data Apple published included:

    15 Billion iTunes song downloads
    130 million book downloads
    14 billion app downloads
    $2.5 billion paid to developers
    225 million accounts
    425k apps
    90k iPad apps
    100k game and entertainment titles
    50 million game center accounts

This chart shows iTunes “content margin” by month – what Apple “keeps” after paying content owners but before paying for other costs like payment processing and fulfillment.