Monday, November 6, 2017

Apple’s record services revenue suggests growth in Apple Pay, Apple Music


Everyone’s favorite almost-trillion-dollar company reported fourth quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday. And while much of the attention was on stellar iPhone sales, Apple wants to make sure that people know its services business is doing great, too.
“Service revenues reaches all-time high,” was the headline of the press release. But what is services revenue, exactly?
Well, it incorporates a lot of things. According to the “data summary,” Apple’s services revenue “includes revenue from Digital Content and Services, AppleCare, Apple Pay, licensing and other services.” Apple Music, iCloud and the App Store are also part of the category.
This broad group of businesses accounted for $8.5 billion in revenue in Apple’s latest quarter, a sizable chunk of Apple’s $52.6 billion in sales. This is also up 34% from the same period last year.
While we haven’t been given a detailed category breakdown, we do know that Apple Music is a growing aspect of the business. The company said that subscriptions are up 75% since last year, as it continues to make gains on Spotify and Pandora.
And Apple Pay, the company’s mobile payments solution, is seeing growth as it develops new partnerships and expands to new countries.
A recently redesigned App Store also has led to more app downloads, says Apple.
Apple’s “other products” category additionally saw impressive gains. This is a division that “includes sales of Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats products, iPod touch and Apple-branded and third-party accessories.” This group brought in $3.2 billion in revenue, up 36% from the same time last year.
But the biggest category was, of course, the iPhone. Partly aided by the release of the iPhone 8 which came out at the end of the quarter, overall sales totaled $28.9 billion.
Macs brought in $7.2 billion in revenue. iPads accounted for $4.8 billion.
Apple has been having a great run on the stock market in 2017.

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