The amount of money Apple makes from selling replacement cables due to fatigue due to inadequate (in their opinion “ugly”) strain relief is negligible. Please stop spreading this inaccurate meme.
Apple makes money because they sell metric shitloads of $1200 phones and $600 watches and, increasingly, software and services for them. Not cables.
I can get an Amazon Basic's brand USB-C cable for $4.17 per meter. Apple sells theirs for $19 per meter.
Is Apple selling these cables at cost, or are they making a profit from them? Amazon isn't a brand I trust either, but from the magnitude of that difference I'm pretty sure Apple is making a tidy profit on these cables. I don't think Apple is a trillion dollar company because of cable sales, but from where I sit it sure seems like Apple is a company that loves nickel and diming people even though they don't need to.
The USB-C standard is arcane and cables can have wildly different functionality and quality and still comply with the standard. Occam's razor suggests that there is not some cable markup conspiracy going on here. Higher quality cables + luxury brand tax is a far more reasonable solution.
Apple's filings show that less than one half of one percent of their revenue comes from the entirety of the MFi program, which includes not just the first-party cables they make, but every single licensed iPhone-compatible accessory of any kind anywhere in the world.
It seems silly to me to think that Apple would jeopardise the value of the number one consumer electronics product on the planet, the product that produces 60% of their revenue, by nickel-and-diming customers on cables.
Who is buying $19 Apple branded charging cables? I guess if consumers want to lean into every minor expense it's hardly fair to blame the company for taking their money... Clearly they were eager to give it to someone in a hurry.
Apple makes money because they sell metric shitloads of $1200 phones and $600 watches and, increasingly, software and services for them. Not cables.