Analysis: Apple captures half of S&P 500's consumer revenue as market pivots to B2B
A Asymco analysis finds Apple alone accounts for 50% of consumer sales among the top 20 companies by market cap, reflecting a broader shift away from consumer-focused business.
What to know
- Apple accounts for roughly 50% of consumer revenue among the top 20 S&P 500 companies by market cap, making it the dominant consumer-revenue player in a market that has shifted heavily toward B2B sales.
- The top 20 companies in 2026 derive 85% of their revenue from business and government sales, a stark change from 2010 when consumer companies like Nestlé, P&G, and Coca-Cola were prominent.
- Tech companies now make up 14 of the top 20 (vs. 6 in 2010) and hold 83% of the combined market capitalization, but most focus on institutional rather than consumer sales.
The dispute Whether the analysis's core claim—that Apple captures 50% of top-20 consumer revenue—is based on comparable or misleading metrics; critics argue it conflates revenue with margin and ignores Amazon's actual consumer sales volume. · positions read across 14 posts and comments
The analysis misrepresents the data by using non-comparable metrics or excluding relevant consumer companies.
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“Amazon $716.92 billion revenue 2025…That's just one company that has more let alone the whole index combined dwarfing Apple. Where does that graph…even come from?”
AnotherGoodName · Hacker News ↗
The analysis correctly identifies margin and revenue structure differences; Apple's high-margin consumer devices dwarf low-margin retail pass-through.
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“Amazon's retail net margins are ~3%. Apple's TTM net margin on their combined products and services is ~28%”
quickthrowman · Hacker News ↗
The broader point about market shift to B2B and institutional sales is valid regardless of exact metrics.
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“This really shows that one that owns the consumer devices has a big leverage to play even in the age of AI - the entry to almost everything.”
thingfyi · Hacker News ↗
John Ternus Apple CEOAsymco Business analyst/author
How it unfolded 1 development · click the chart to see its coverage articlespostscomments
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Asymco publishes analysis of consumer revenue concentration in top S&P 500 firms
Asymco releases an analysis arguing that Apple captures approximately 50% of consumer revenue among the top 20 companies by market capitalization. The author compares the market landscape in 2010—when 8 of the top 20 were consumer-focused companies including Nestlé, P&G, J&J, and Coca-Cola—to 2026, where Apple stands largely alone as a major consumer revenue generator. The analysis concludes that 85% of the top 20's revenue is now derived from business or government sales.
“Building incredible products that make their lives better…”
— John Ternus -
first by HN Frontpage, 12d ago
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I stopped thinking about Apple as a technology company when I realized they ACTIVELY fast follow instead of being pioneers in fundamental technology.I don’t think that’s an insult or bad, if anything it makes them more reliable as a company because they ride the wave of technological advancement rather than on the leading edge.That’s a really…
2 more of the top 3 · 14 posts in this stretch
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A
The Last Consumer Company https:// asymco.com/2026/11/01/the-last -consumer-company/
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The author doesn't understand Berkshire Hathaway. They have lots of consumer companies, GEICO being a large one, also a manufactured home manufacturer, See's Candies (not large by revenue, though), a furniture retailer, etc. A fair amount of Berkshire's revenue also comes from dividends from consumer companies, like Coca-Cola and Apple. Buffett's…
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What people are saying 11 voices from 1 site · best of 14 · verbatim
- How exactly did the author calculate the breakdown between consumer and B2B revenue for each company, especially retailers and Amazon?
- Is the comparison valid when using net margin for retailers but gross revenue for other companies?
- Nov 1
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This comment being at the top just goes to show how the HN crowd is no different than any other social media. Bro didn’t care to even read the article.
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Claiming that Meta's revenue is 0% consumer is something... (Why do advertisers pay Meta???)Showing Alphabet's revenue by % of total revenue, as opposed to bar charts breaking out revenue by division, is chart crime.I like apple and Asymco. But this is post 'How to lie with statistics 101.' Meaningfully lowers my opinion of Asymco
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> When looking at other large companies today, I noted that most of them are focused on selling to institutions rather than consumers.This really shows that one that owns the consumer devices has a big leverage to play even in the age of AI - the entry to almost everything.
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FTA: 3) Retailer percentages are margin only as sales otherwise are pass-throughThey’re only counting margin from Amazon’s retail operations since they’re reselling products manufactured by others and Amazon’s retail net margins are ~3%.Apple’s TTM net margin on their combined products and services is ~28%
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Amazon draws a lot of it's revenue from AWS/Cloud services, i.e. not consumer, and only some from sales of low margin consumer goods.Apple gets the bulk of it's revenue from high margin consumer devices, apps, and consumer subscription plans etc.
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The "top 20 of 2026" table in the article puts Amazon at $776B, but only 3.75% of that ($29B) attributed to B2C revenue. I don't know whether that number is correct, but AWS is clearly a massive chunk of non-B2C revenue for Amazon.
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The author appears to be comparing Apple's revenue against a measure closer to retailers' gross margins rather than their total consumer sales.
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The difference is that Amazon’s to-consumer revenue is very low (~5%) while Apple’s is very high (~95%)
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> A large number of companies offer 0% consumer exposure: NvidiaI thought they're still selling gaming GPUs? What did I miss?
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This makes no sense at allAmazon $716.92 billion revenue 2025Apple $416.16 billion revenue 2025That's just one company that has more let alone the whole index combined dwarfing Apple.Where does that graph that shows apple as a 100x outlier on consumer revenue even come from? It's not at all correct and doesn't pass the most basic smell test. Yet…
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The page doesn't load at the moment and yet this is getting 5 upvotes every refresh.Is it bot-raised or are people voting based on just the title?