Apple today marked the close of an historic 2019 for its Services businesses following its biggest ever year so far.
The introduction of Apple Arcade, Apple Card, News +, and TV+ helped ensure Services continued to reach new heights. They also mean Apple goes into 2020 with “incredible momentum.”
Samsung wants to copy Apple’s success in services by establishing a $50 billion-a-year services business. This would help the company make up for falling smartphone sales with subscription sales.
Having invested heavily in software over the past four years, a senior Samsung executive said the company is working to turn this into, “meaningful customer experiences.”
The money Apple earns from advertising could rise to a whopping $11 billion a year by 2025, one analyst says.
Cupertino currently rakes in around $2 billion a year from ad revenue. The recent launch of Apple TV+ provides an opportunity for that to skyrocket over the next six years.
But will Apple really take advantage of it?
Apple earnings report for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2019 met the most bullish of Wall Street expectations this afternoon with a Q4 record high of $64 billion in revenue and $3.03 earnings per share.
Apple’s stock price started soaring in after-hours trading on news of the positive earnings. With the iPhone 11 on sale for just 10 days during Q4, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave credit to Apple’s booming service business and the Apple Watch and AirPods for pushing the quarter to record heights.
All early indications point to sales of the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro performing even better than expected. But because the new devices were only on sale for the very tail end of the quarter, they might not have given Apple the growth Wall Street is desperate to see.
Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri are set to divulge all the details for Apple’s fiscal Q4 2019 earnings on Wednesday, October 30, at 2 p.m. PDT. Per usual, Cult of Mac will be analyzing all the data right when it drops and there are a couple of areas and metrics that are key to keeping Apple’s stock price soaring.
Plenty of folks are buzzing over Apple’s shift to services. From Apple Arcade to iCloud to Apple TV+, Apple’s got a new lucrative business stream which could pick up some of the slack from falling hardware sales.
Keybanc analyst Andy Hargreaves isn’t convinced, however. In fact, he points out that not only are services a competitive market (which everyone knows), but that Apple may actually be headed in the wrong direction.
Record-breaking revenue put Apple right in line with Wall Street expectations as the company released its Q3 2019 earnings report today.
The iPhone-maker brought in $53.8 billion in revenue, a number within range of its own guidance and most analysts’ predictions. That set a new record for Apple third-quarter revenue — a slight gain from Q3 2018’s $53.3 billion. CEO Tim Cook touted the company’s subscription offerings for fueling the new all-time high.
The iPhone XR is currently far and away Apple’s top-selling iPhone model in the U.S.. Right now, it makes up just under half of all new iPhone models sold in Apple’s biggest market.
That’s the highest percentage of sales for a single iPhone model since the iPhone 6 back in 2015.
There’s a plenty of court intrigue about the reasons for Jony Ive leaving Apple.
John Arlidge, who interviewed Ive for the U.K.’s Sunday Times in 2013 and 2014, has an interesting take. In an article for Wired, Arlidge points out that Ive’s split from Apple comes at a time when it’s pivoting away from hardware.
Apple is already having to consider some major changes to its new Apple News+ service just three months after it launched earlier this year.
The subscription news service was supposed to be a boon for publishers and bring in a ton of extra cash, but a new report claims most publishers are only seeing a fraction of the revenue Apple promised.
