Apple have made it a point of differentiation against Google and Facebook in particular.
They say that they try to do as much processing on device as possible and when data (for stuff like Maps) is submitted centrally, they anonymise the data collection - so they can learn usage information without knowing who it's from.
We don't know exactly how effective this is, as they are a secretive company, and this doesn't mean that bugs and breaches don't happen. But they make the point that, as their revenue comes from products and services, not targeted advertising, they don't need that data collection in order to grow the business.
Interesting, I wasn't (consciously) aware of that advertising...
I think personally, I don't find it believable that one of the world's largest public companies would have the discipline to forgo a revenue stream as big as advertising over the long term. If they have the data they'll eventually use it IMHO.
It's interesting to think of privacy concerns as split between concerns about sharing data with a "counterparty" company, and concerns about sharing data with a third party like an advertiser. I think I'm at least as concerned about giving data to a counter party as I am to giving it to a third party.
I never really thought about privacy conerns as beeing the concern that one's data could leave a BIGTECH company. Always thought about it as allowing one of those companies access in the first place.
Well, Apple say that they don't actually have the data in the first place.
For example, with maps, they chop your travel into pieces with no common identifiers.
So that way, they get traffic information and can understand which routes are busy or frequently used.
But, because there's no identifiers involved and it's broken into pieces before it reaches them, even if they wanted to, they can't tie that data back to you or recreate your actual journey on a particular day.
Which in turn means they can't build a picture of where you, as an individual, go.
That's a rough paraphrase of what Apple have said, anyway.
As far as revenue streams go, they make their money from hardware and increasingly subscription services. Differentiation is important - and because of their business model, they can talk about privacy in a way that their competition cannot.
They say that they try to do as much processing on device as possible and when data (for stuff like Maps) is submitted centrally, they anonymise the data collection - so they can learn usage information without knowing who it's from.
We don't know exactly how effective this is, as they are a secretive company, and this doesn't mean that bugs and breaches don't happen. But they make the point that, as their revenue comes from products and services, not targeted advertising, they don't need that data collection in order to grow the business.