The ad business hidden in Apple's top secret vault
#439: The best-selling author of Apple in China details how its rising ad ambitions are built on a tinderbox of trust, dependence and tension...
Update: Bloomberg reported in late March that Apple is rolling out ads on Maps - copying Google Maps again.
Apple just posted record earnings, again, and Wall Street cheered. Again.
But buried inside the numbers is a story that should make every investor, regulator, publisher and consumer deeply uncomfortable.
Apple’s annual revenue now exceeds US$400 billion. More than half is concentrated in the iPhone, the most successful consumer product in history.
Its fastest-growing market? China. Greater China revenue jumped 38 per cent this quarter.
The chips that make it all work? Taiwan — which China is threatening war over.
The AI now being wired into every iPhone and Mac? Google.
Apple is a US$4 trillion American company that is, by almost every meaningful operational measure, dependent on a rival superpower, a disputed island and a surveillance competitor.
And the deeper you dig, the worse it gets.
Today:
How Apple has quietly built a fast-growing advertising empire by hobbling its competitors while telling the world it’s a privacy company.
What’s working and what’s not for the 450 publishers fuelling Apple News — in real revenue.
The untold story of the deepening ties between Google and Apple, and what it means for competition and prices.
And what Cupertino’s been hiding in its top secret earnings vault.
Welcome to paid subs from industry group Digital Content Next, FT Strategies, Deloitte, The Seattle Times and the UK’s Daily Mail. Thank you, you’re keeping the lights on 💡
Plus new subs from News Corp’s senior leadership in London, Schibsted in Sweden (where my weather app tells me it’s -12°C), New York audience data agency 7knots, media M&A movers and shakers CueBall in Colorado, CMS provider Labrador in New York, the founders at engagement specialists The Audiencers in Paris, Estonia’s largest news portal Delfi, among many others.
And thank you to fellow Substackers recommending Future Media this week, including Press and Democracy by Peter Vandermeersch from European news publishing group Mediahuis in Antwerp, and The Open Access Blogs by Pablo B. Markin promising “education for individuals who aspire to go beyond the headlines”.
This one has been exhausting, but fun - and very insightful. Cheers 🥃
