After introducing Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, Apple News+ and Apple Card in 2019, Apple has expanded its Services division, with potential revenues of up to $100 Billion by 2024
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Last year as Apple introduced new offerings in video streaming, games, credit cards and news, while further augmenting its established operations such as the App store, Apple Music and iCloud, the tech giant also saw a large increase in services. As the company’s iPhone sales plateau, CEO Tim Cook has looked for alternative ways to keep growing the company. Services, albeit accompanied by risks, challenges and competition, is the new arena that Apple has committed to. While challenging on some levels, Services also offers large potential for growth as Apple can sell subscription-based models using its popular smartphone for things people want to do on their phones.
Profitable Subscription-Based Models
These services were apparent at Apple’s “It’s Showtime” back in March where the company announced two subscription models via its Apple tv+ platform for original shows and programming and Apple News platform for premium news offerings. Apple’s service division has seen a 20 percent increase year after year bringing in more revenue each quarter and setting records in “every geographic segment” in the process, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Services raked in over $10 billion in the first quarter of 2019 — exactly one year ago. This is substantially more than any of Apple’s other business segments such as the Mac ($7.4 billion), iPad ($6.7 billion), or the collected “Wearables, Home, and Accessories” group of products ($7.3 billion).
Earlier this month, Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani explained how Apple’s services arm can be expected to top $100 billion in revenue by 2024. While Apple has not clearly delineated the amount of revenue for any aspect of its large Services offering, we have put together some estimates based on publicly available data below.
Apple Music
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Apple Music is by far the most noticeable entry in Apple’s new Services business — in operation since 2015 when Apple bought and rebranded Beats Music. Apple Music had 56 million customers as of December 2018, according to the Financial Times, coming in second after Spotify with 96 million paid customers as of February 2019. Apple Music does offer free trials and has a bundled service with some Verizon wireless plans. Apple Music has over 60 million songs and is in use in 115 countries today.
Rough estimates for Apple Music income as of last year are roughly $6.7 billion annually at a $10/month subscription
Cost: $10/month ($5/mo for student plans, $15/mo for family plans)
Apple’s revenue: Subscription fees and carrier partnerships
App Store and Mac App Store
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The App Store along with the new Mac App Store provide the largest revenue currently. In May 2018, Apple had over 170 billion downloads by its 10-year history. Some revenue comes directly from app sales while others come through in-app purchases. Almost all the top 50 grossing apps used some type of subscription fee or a free game with in-app purchases, according to App Annie estimates.
App Store customers spent a record $1.42 billion between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, with $386 million on New Year’s Day 2020 alone, a 20 percent increase over last year and a new single-day record.
Apple paid developers $100 billion by June 2018. Using the formula of 70 / 30 revenue split, Apple’s revenue estimates from apps alone is roughly $142 billion. Apple has faced some heat over the last two years as the Supreme Court heard an antitrust law against Apple for an unfair monopoly and again when Spotify filed a complaint about the revenue split with the European Union — known for exerting huge punitive measures on tech companies in recent years.
Cost: Variable, depending upon the app and content purchased.
Apple’s revenue: In-app purchases in games, app sales and app subscriptions
iCloud
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Every Apple customer who owns any device — an iPhone, iPad, or Mac is essentially an iCloud user as Apple offers gives free 5GB of storage to all customers. Customers can have additional storage through paid plans. While iCloud is not as well known as Dropbox or Google Drive, it does have built-in advantages such as seamless integration with Apple devices for immediate backup. This works from photos in iPhoto on your iPhone, clearing up space so you can take more photos easily.
The lowest tier in storage plans comes in at 99 cents for 50GB of storage. Easy to sell to customers, this pricing tier even though incredibly inexpensive, also offers substantial profitability given that Apple has sold over a billion iOS devices. Even if a small part of these customers subscribe, it is still a large source of revenue. Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP shared in 2016 that the company had roughly 782 million iCloud users, though he did not specify how many of these customers were paid subscribers.
Cost: $0.99/ month (50GB), $2.99/month (200GB for single or family plan), $9.99/month (2TB for single or family plan)
Apple’s revenue: Subscription fees
Apple TV+
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Apple TV+ is Apple’s first foray into TV with its own original programming such as the highly acclaimed “The Morning Show,” that received multiple Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations just two months after launch. Available in over 100 countries, Apple TV+ is accessible via the Apple TV app and can be viewed online and offline without any ads and on demand.
Cost: Free with any Apple device purchase for the first year, $4.99/ month regular plan and subsequently
Apple’s revenue: Subscription fees
Apple Arcade
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Apple Arcade is Apple’s newest subscription service within the App Store just for games and providing access to over 100 new and exclusive games, that can be played on iPhones, iPads, iPod touches, Macs or Apple TVs.
Cost: $4.99/ month (includes up to 6 users)
Apple’s revenue: Subscription fees
Apple News
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Apple News today reaches over 100 million monthly active users in the US, UK, Australia and Canada. Apple News+ has an all-in-one subscription to over 300 of the world’s top magazines and major newspapers. Apple News will provide live coverage of the US presidential election in partnership with ABC News this year.
Cost: Free for basic use, 9.99 for Apple News+ (Access to over 300 magazines and publications)
Apple’s revenue: Subscription fees with a 70/30 split with publishers
Apple Podcasts
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Apple Podcasts now reaches listeners in 155 countries with over 800,000 shows. While Apple does not receive any direct income from Apple Podcasts, the company does have access to data from Apple Music that enables the company to recommend other things to purchase. Podcasting continues to grow at an accelerated rate.
Cost: Free
Apple’s revenue: No known direct income
Apple Books
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Apple Books offers additional service revenue, though it comes in significantly behind Amazon’s Kindle library, which is a juggernaut to compete with. Apple Books has improved its design and search features in the latest iteration.
Cost: Depends on content purchased
Apple’s revenue: Purchased content and subscription fees
Apple Pay and Apple Card
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Apple Pay is Apple’s hugely successful payments system that offers customers a secure, fast and easy way to make purchases online, via apps, at retail stores and through iMessage. There were over 1.8 billion Apple Pay transactions in early 2019 and this number is expected to only go up.
While Apple does not charge users, merchants, or developers to use Apple Pay, the company charges the bank that issues the card small fees such as 15 cents on every $100 spent or 0.15 percent based on reports from 2014. Apple also earns money from Apple Pay cash. While this service is free to use when you send money using a debit card, there is a 3 percent fee for using a credit card. Apple also offers an instant transfer option from Apple Cash to your bank account at 1% fee, similar to Paypal.
Apple Pay is now available for use for public transit in large cities from New York to London, Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo and Moscow. This year, customers will also be able to tap their iPhones and Apple Watches to ride buses and trains in more cities worldwide and even use the service to access university dorms and other college services in the U.S.
The Apple Card offers users ways to pay for new Apple equipment with zero interest payments for over 24 months.
Cost: 1% instant transfer fee, 3% of any funds sent using Apple Pay Cash tied to a credit card
Apple’s revenue: Transaction fees from users and banks
AppleCare
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In existence for over a decade, AppleCare is Apple’s extended warranty service where you can get additional hardware support and a longer warranty period than the default setting that comes with a purchase. This plan is also included in Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Plan
Cost: Depends on product, ranging from $129 to $199 for iPhones, $249 to $369 for MacBook laptops, and $99 to $249 for iMac and Mac desktops
Apple’s revenue: Warranty fees
Licensing
This business service division does not apply to consumers, but offers substantial revenue for Apple. Apple sells licenses to various companies for them to offer their products within iOS frameworks such as Google for the default search engine or The Weather Channel offering weather data. This is very important as it offers users immediate access and makes it easy for these companies to reach and retain audiences.
While it is unclear how much Apple earns from licensing, 2014 court documents revealed that Google paid Apple $1 billion to remain the default search bar on iOS as part of the company’s revenue sharing agreement. As of 2019, analysts estimate that Apple receives $9 billion for licensing fees from Google alone.
Licensing agreements are a particularly opaque area of Apple’s business. The last clear numbers we have are from 2014, when court documents revealed that Google paid Apple $1 billion to stay the default search bar on iOS as part of the company’s revenue sharing agreement. But recent estimates from analysts have put Apple’s fee at roughly $9 billion — a number that, if true, would make it one of the biggest parts of Apple’s entire service group all on its own.
Cost: Free
Apple’s revenue: Licensing payments from companies to be featured on Apple products
Maps, Siri and a Free iCloud Version
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Since 2019, Apple has now included “free” services like Maps, Siri, and parts of iCloud (like iMessage) as part of its device cost to build iPhones, iPads and Macs. With these new estimates and associated payments for these free services, Apple’s total service revenue for Q1 2018 went up 7.7% to $9.13 billion from to $9.13 billion.
Cost: Free, but you pay for it through your purchase of an Apple device
Apple’s revenue: Hardware purchases
“We begin the new decade with incredible momentum and gratitude to our customers who have shown such enthusiasm for all of our Services, and we continue to celebrate the work of the world’s best creators, storytellers, journalists and developers.”
With its deep integration of hardware, software and services, Apple’s Services can be expected to continue to grow in 2020 and beyond.
