Apple's hardware division, comprising of all the iPhones and MacBooks, make up for huge profit margins in the company's revenue, but the Cupertino-based tech titan touts services as a huge area of growth. In one such example, Google might be writing hefty paycheques to Apple only to remain a default search engine on Safari on all iOS devices.
Goldman Sachs analyst Rod Hall is reporting that Google could pay Apple a whopping $9 billion amount in 2018 to keep its largest search engine running as default on iPhone's Safari browser. That's not it, the number is only going to increase as Google might even pay up to $12 billion in 2019 for the same, 9to5Mac reported on Saturday, when it was thought to have paid over $3 billion in 2017.
Apple doesn't have its own web search solution, which is why it has to rely on Google or Microsoft Bing. While the company uses Bing search engine for all web searches via Siri, Google is the default platform for Safari web searches. But the sub-par results offered by Bing are often subjected to criticism, making Google a viable choice for iPhone users.
"We believe this revenue is charged ratably based on the number of searches that users on Apple's platform originate from Siri or within the Safari browser," Hall was quoted as saying by Business Insider. "We believe Apple is one of the biggest channels of traffic acquisition for Google."
Even though Google is shelling out a huge sum of cash to remain the default web search choice for iPhone users, it is a lucrative deal for Google, which generates most of its revenue from advertising. Even for Apple, Google's dependence has been rewarding to its services segment, which generated $9.55 billion in Q3 – 31 percent spike compared with last year.
Google Chrome dominates the browser industry with 59.7 percent, Safari comes second with 14.5 percent command in the category. In the U.S. alone, Chrome's internet traffic delivers 49 percent of the internet traffic as compared to Safari's 31 percent, Search Engine Land reported.
With Google being default search engine on two of the biggest web traffic generators, it offers a significant boost to the advertising click volume.
