That's not an excuse for them to be driving such insane margins then. Plus, who's to say that the iPhone doesn't receive another overhaul in the next few years, driving the margins back down? Apple will continue to play this game of cat-and-mouse for as long as you let them, and that's ultimately how they accumulate wealth. It's a campaign almost entirely ran on deception.
Yes, and at some point it's possible consumers simply won't pay for some new technology down the road. Say for example, a very expensive health/bio sensor. However, Apple might feel that 1) it's good for the world to be able to monitor/improve health, 2) will give safe access to this sensor to 3rd party developers, so it's good Apple can draw on this revenue source from platform fees to make it happen, by killing margins to ship this sensor. I am not saying this is happening today at all. I just think it's good for the platform to have diverse revenue sources. It's good for Apple, but it might also be good for developers too
This is an idyllic situation which has sadly never panned out. Apple has had plenty of times to integrate their hardware and software with open standards, but time and time again they reject it in favor of overcomplicated and inherently insecure solutions. Imagine how simple messaging would be if iMessage was an open protocol, or Airdrop was a standardized and unlicensed. The solution isn't to crush your competitors, it's to coexist with them. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook have all accepted their postmodern places in the industry, and Apple will continue to stick out like a sore thumb until they return to their core competencies and quit repeating the mistakes Microsoft made in the late 90s.
Customers aren't the only factor here, though. Developers are coming out en-masse to denounce Apple's business practices right now, and the government has been starting to intervene lately too. It's obvious that there is contention in Apple's ecosystem, so they'd be much better suited to addressing it outright instead of dragging it into the world's longest media fiasco. This is (and has been) one of Tim Cook's massive pitfalls, and he repeatedly falls into these asinine grudge matches that only further destroy what little digital cogency there is in this world.
