Google pays Apple $1 billion to be the default search engine on iOS hardware: Report

By: Sahil 'Bones' Gupta| Feb 13th, 2013 at 04:59PM

A Morgan Stanley analyst has postulated that Google pays Apple $1 billion on a yearly basis in a report called ‘The Next Google is Google’. Even lasy year a Macquarie analyst had predicted the same. Apparently, Apple and Google have a per device deal, rather than a revenue sharing deal.

This means for every $1 of revenue Google makes on iOS devices like the iPhone and the iPad, Apple gets 75 cents. This also allows Apple to collect the money up front.

The report takes into account the number of devices Apple has sold in this year and once one totals that the figure amounts to $1 billion for the year.

On the face of it, the numbers seem little extreme, but the report considers to be a fair deal considering combined with the dominance of Android, $1 billion a year seems to be a small price to pay for a literal monopoly in search revenue in mobile.

It’s also worth noting that Apple has been continuously reducing Google’s presence on iOS. With iOS 6, it removed Google Maps and YouTube as default apps and even Google Search is only labeled as ‘Search’ in iOS ever since version 4.

Source: www.bgr.in