We can see from Apple's 2024Q4 10-Q that "Revenue" is described as "Net sales", and that Q4 had $8 billion for the IPad, so about $32 billion for the year - comparable to the prediction of "$30 billion ad business by 2026".
Total net sales in Q4 was $124 billion of which $26 billion was services (where ads and Google income are placed).
The $4 billion was from a few years ago. The actual number doesn't seem to be published, but the numbers seem more like 7-8 billion, which is about 5% of revenue, not less than 1%.
It's an insignificant part of their business even if it doubled or tripled in size.
Apple is obviously not "an advertising company" as opposed to Google which has been an advertising company since the beginning.
Apple was founded as a computer company ~50 years ago which sold the Apple I. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Nothing to do with ads. Now 50 years later they are starting to make some extra money on the side from ad revenue.
You are being weirdly pedantic and arguing to the point of absurdity. At some point you just have to accept basic logic and common sense.
Apple has never been an "ad company". They sell computers, software, subscriptions, and they take a cut of the App Store revenue. Ads are a tiny part of their revenue now. Doesn't make them an "ad company" like Google, where ads are their primary revenue source.
I bought a lot of Apple products. They made their money from the high margin in the purchase price, not ad views which I have never seen anywhere on my Macs and maybe seen a couple of the ads on the app store on my phone. They earned about 1 cent on those two ad views, and thousands of dollars from the hardware sales and iCloud subscription.
We can see from Apple's 2024Q4 10-Q that "Revenue" is described as "Net sales", and that Q4 had $8 billion for the IPad, so about $32 billion for the year - comparable to the prediction of "$30 billion ad business by 2026".
Total net sales in Q4 was $124 billion of which $26 billion was services (where ads and Google income are placed).
The $4 billion was from a few years ago. The actual number doesn't seem to be published, but the numbers seem more like 7-8 billion, which is about 5% of revenue, not less than 1%.