According to analyst Ben Schachter, Google pays Apple an astonishing $1 billion a year in order to be the number one search engine on the iOS and OS X platforms, MacGeneration reports. Google makes $1.3 billion a year by being the default on iOS/OS X, leaving them with about $300 million in profit.
Even though the above figures are only estimates, the huge fees that Google pay Apple means that Apple devices only generate less than 1% of their revenue through the Google search box.
With the fierce competition between the two companies and Apple seemingly moving away from Google Maps on the iPhone, who would be more hurt be a potential split? Apple would lose a billion dollars, but for them that’s nothing, while Google would lose iOS devices. I’d say that the latter would suffer more in the long term.
