Previously, Apple only said it competed against Google‘s Android in smartphones and Microsoft Windows in PCs for the attention of software developers.
Apple’s competitors were an important topic in a high-profile antitrust trial with Epic Games earlier this year in which Apple argued that it didn’t have a monopoly because its App Store competed against other gaming platforms that also offered Epic’s Fortnite, the Epic app Apple banned from its store.
At the time, the company did not list gaming consoles as competitors in its SEC filings.
Ultimately, the judge ruled that Apple did not have a monopoly in the market for “mobile gaming transactions,” but ordered the company to change its business practices and allow developers to link out to payment methods not operated by Apple. Epic Games and Apple are appealing the ruling.
The update in Apple’s annual filing also reflects how much money the company makes from gaming on its phones and tablets.
According to the court ruling in the Epic Games trial, about 70% of all App Store revenue comes from gaming apps, which is generated by less than 10% of App Store users.
Apple is also increasingly catering to gamers in product decisions. In September, Apple released new iPhone 13 Pro models with displays that can increase their refresh rate, a popular feature among gamers.
Risks from legislation and government investigations
Apple warned investors in its annual filing that it may be forced to make further changes to its App Store, which could decrease the number of apps downloaded and reduce the commission Apple takes.
Apple “is also subject to litigation and investigations relating to the App Store, which have resulted in changes to the Company’s business practices, and may in the future result in further changes,” the company said in the filing with the SEC.
Apple takes between 15% and 30% of paid software downloads, in-app purchases and subscriptions sold by third-party apps on its App Store.
Apple’s App Store is part of its services business, which reported $68.43 billion in sales in the company’s fiscal 2021, a 27% increase over the previous year. Apple doesn’t break out revenue from the components in services, which also include subscriptions, extended warranties and advertising.
According to Apple’s filing, sales in its services business increased last year primarily because of growth in advertising, App Store and cloud. But Apple warned that its advertising business may be hurt by increased scrutiny on other technology companies.
“For example, the Company earns revenue from licensing arrangements with other companies to offer their search services on the Company’s platforms and apps, and certain of these arrangements are currently subject to government investigations and legal proceedings,” Apple said in the filing.
While Apple didn’t name Google, it has a lucrative licensing agreement under which Google is the default search engine on iPhones. The Department of Justice cited “public estimates” that Google pays Apple between $8 billion and $12 billion per year as part of this deal as part of an antitrust lawsuit against Google.
A pedestrian walks past Amazon Ireland corporate offices in Dublin, as Amazon.com, Inc., said on Tuesday it plans to cut its global corporate workforce by as many as 14,000 roles and seize the opportunity provided by artificial intelligence (AI), in Dublin, Ireland, Oct. 28, 2025.
Damien Eagers | Reuters
A new bipartisan bill seeks to provide a “clear picture” of how artificial intelligence is affecting the American workforce.
Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., on Wednesday announced the AI-Related Job Impacts Clarity Act. It would require publicly traded companies, certain private companies and federal agencies to submit quarterly reports to the Department of Labor detailing any job losses, new hires, reduced hiring or other significant changes to their workforce as a result of AI.
The data would then be compiled by the Department of Labor into a publicly available report.
“This bipartisan legislation will finally give us a clear picture of AI’s impact on the workforce,” Warner said in a statement. “Armed with this information, we can make sure AI drives opportunity instead of leaving workers behind.”
The proposed legislation comes as politicians, labor advocates and some executives have sounded the alarm in recent years about the potential for widespread job loss due to AI.
In May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that the AI tools that his company and others are building could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and cause unemployment to spike up to 20% in the next one to five years. Anthropic makes the chatbot Claude.
Layoffs have been announced recently at companies across the tech, retail, auto and shipping industries, with executives citing myriad reasons, from AI and tariffs to shifting business priorities and broader cost-cutting efforts. Job cuts announced at Amazon, UPS and Target last month totaled more than 60,000 roles.
Some experts have questioned whether AI is fully to blame for the layoffs, noting that companies could be using the technology as cover for concerns about the economy, business missteps or cost cutting initiatives.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc., arrives at the Tesla plant in Gruenheide, Germany, on March 13, 2024.
Krisztian Bocsi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tesla sold just 750 electric vehicles in Germany for October 2025, less than half of what it sold a year ago, according to data out Wednesday from the country’s federal transport authority, known as KBA.
In October last year, Tesla sold 1,607 EVs in Germany.
KBA data shows 434,627 new battery electric vehicles year to date, the KBA data said, up nearly 40% from the same period last year. Of those EVs, 15,595 were Teslas, a decline of 50% for Elon Musk‘s automaker this year.
Tesla operates a massive vehicle assembly plant in Brandenburg, Germany, which is outside of Berlin, but the company is not a hometown favorite.
Musk’s incendiary political rhetoric and endorsement of AfD, Germany’s extremist, anti-immigrant party, have weighed on left-leaning consumers’ interest in the Tesla brand there.
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Tesla also faces a passel of European and Chinese competitors throughout Europe offering smaller and more affordable EVs, many priced below 35,000 euros.
During October, Tesla began selling a new, lower-cost version of its Model Y SUV in Germany. The stripped-down version of the SUV was priced at 39,990 euros for the German market — about 5,000 euros lower than the cheapest, previously available versions of the Model Y there.
It remains to be seen whether Tesla’s new, lower-priced model variants can help revitalize demand for their EVs in Germany or Europe.
Policy changes ahead may lift EV sales in Germany, overall.
Germany scrapped incentives to boost purchases of fully electric vehicles about two years ago, a policy change that led to a sharp drop in demand for fully electric vehicles, initially. The country is now poised to start up a new EV incentive program that goes into effect in January 2026, and is intended to help lower- and middle-income buyers adopt zero tailpipe emission vehicles.
Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
With OpenAI’s recent release of its AI browser, the historic level of capital expenditures being made in the current AI arms race may accelerate even further, if that is possible.
From the reciprocal, and some have said circular, nature of hundreds of billions in commitments in investment, tied to future chip purchases, to the extent to which GDP growth is reliant on this boom, some have said this is a bubble. A Harvard economist estimates 92% of US GDP growth in the first half of 2025 was due to investment in AI.
But much more needs to be understood about the connection between the breakneck investment in AI and the business models that underpins the entire economy: the advertising technology (Ad Tech) industrial complex.
For the past 25 years the infrastructure of the internet has been engineered to extract advertising revenue. Search Engine Marketing, the advertising business model at the core of Google, is perhaps the greatest business model of all time. Meta’s advertising business, based on engagement and attribution, is a close second. And right behind both of these is Amazon’s advertising business, powered by its position as the largest online retailer. While a smaller portion of Amazon‘s topline, its highly profitable advertising business makes up a disproportionate percentage of Amazon’s profits. So much so that nearly every major retailer has spun up their own version of retail media networks, all driving significantly to the bottom lines and market capitalization of massive companies like Walmart, Kroger, Uber (and UberEats), Doordash and many more.
In fact, these platforms have been using AI to refine their advertising business models for years, in the form of algorithmic models that powered their search and recommendation engines, and to increase engagement and better predict purchase decision, seeking an ever-greater share of all commerce, not just what is typically thought of as “advertising.” These three multi-trillion-dollar market cap companies either wholly, or substantially, derive their profits from advertising. And now they are using some portion of those historically profitable advertising revenues to fuel infrastructure investments at a level the world has not seen outside of War Time spending by governments.
But at the same time, the latest wave of AI has the potential to disrupt the very same trillions in market cap that is fueling it. AI will, without question, change how people search (Google), shop (Amazon) and are entertained (Meta). Answers delivered without clicking around the web. AI-assisted shopping. Infinite personalized content creation.
If AI represents such a potential existential risk, why are Google, Meta and Amazon such a huge part of the current arms race to invest in AI? The “moonshot” outcome of would be that achieving Artificial General Intelligence, or Super Intelligence, AI that can do anything a human can, but better, would unlock so much value that it would dwarf any investment.
But there is more immediate urgency to protect, or disrupt, the advertising business model fueling the trillions in market cap and hundreds of billions of current investment, before someone else does. While the seminal paper that launched this phase of AI, “Attention is All You Need” was written by mostly Google researchers, it was OpenAI and Microsoft, and now Grok as well, that launched the current AI arms race. And they are not remotely as dependent on the current advertising industrial complex. In fact, Sam Altman has called the feeds of the major platforms using AI to maximize advertising dollars, “the first at-scale misaligned AIs.” He is clearly stating which businesses he believes OpenAI is trying to disrupt.
What comes next?
This time is different, but it also comes with different risks. The major difference with the current fever in infrastructure investment vs the dotcom bubble of 2000, is that in large part the companies funding it are among the most profitable companies in the world. And so far, there has not been indications of cracks in the business model of advertising that is both funding their investments, and their market capitalizations (along with so many massive companies people wouldn’t think about being in the advertising business).
But if AI does disrupt, or even break, the current advertising model, the shock to the economy and markets would be far greater than most could imagine.
Google, Meta and Amazon are still best positioned to create new business models, and as mentioned, have been using AI for far longer to support their advertising business models with great success.
However, fundamentally changing the way people interface with search, commerce and content online will require just that, entirely new revenue models, maybe, hopefully, some that are aligned, that are not advertising based. But whatever the model, perhaps it is helpful to consider that the justification in AI infrastructure spending may not be to just unlock new revenue, but to protect the business models that make up a much more significant portion of the market capitalization of public companies than most people are aware.