Does Apple profit from sharing user data?
I see how Facebook and Google clearly profit from selling my data. I don’t immediately see the benefit to Apple of allowing companies to track users. I know Apple is making moves towards privacy but the fact that apps and websites on my iPhone can still track me relatively easily makes me wonder why.
I don’t think you “see clearly” at all. Saying that Google and Facebook sell user data is to fundamentally misunderstand their business model. And I see this said all the time.
Google and Facebook sell ad not data. They make lots of money because their ads are effective, because they target them using data. They hoard their data on users. Keeping it a secret is their moat. Data is the golden goose. They will not/do not sell it. (They do buy data in huge volumes to supplement their already massive proprietary data troves and build ever granular market segments.)
I’m not defending what anyone in the targeted marketing space does. But there are data brokers, and Google and Facebook are not among them.
I'm not sure, but it's worth pointing out that more and more of Apple's revenue is coming from software services, not hardware.
Given their business models, maybe certain major apps would have refused to support iOS if they weren't allowed to track their users.
Apple wants to block Google and Facebook from tracking users for "privacy" reasons. But you will see, that 1 or 2 years later, they will launch their own "privacy protecting" ad network or demand a cut from facebook or google so they can show their ads on apple devices and access user targeting features under the disguise of privacy approved partners.
Not really. They don’t sell user data and the only targeted ads they have are in the News App and App Store, both of which you can opt out of targeting.
They don't sell your personal data. They allow ad-tracking, but you do have some control over that. The benefit for apple is mainly in apps