Over 900 million users pay for subscriptions on Apple devices

AppleInsider

The number of people paying for subscriptions on Apple platforms now exceeds 900 million, up from 816 million one quarter ago.

App Store subscriptions exceed 900 million paid subscribers

The number of total subscriptions continues to rise at a rapid rate at Apple. In July, the number was at 816 million and has increased by nearly 90 million since.

The pandemic provided a boost in subscription numbers over the past few years, and analysts had expected this growth to slow as people returned to normal work. However, it appears that Apple's services like Apple Music and Apple TV+ continue to grow amid other services like Hulu and app subscriptions.

The total number of subscribers is derived by counting any subscription made on an Apple platform. This includes Apple services, entertainment apps, and app subscriptions originating from the App Store, like Carrot Weather and Twitter.

Since Apple takes a cut of every purchase or subscription made on its platform, with few exceptions, it is able to count every subscription as attributable to increasing its bottom line.

Services revenue continues to rise steadily

Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that Apple's services continue to grow, with services setting a September quarter revenue record, up 5%. This was attributed to strong customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Apple announced its third-quarter earnings on Thursday and it earned $90.15 billion. Services revenue missed analysts' expectations, but it was still $19.18 billion in revenue.

Read on AppleInsider

DAalseth

I wrote Apple a couple of months ago. What I told them was they were leaving money on the table. I have 200GB in iCloud. I really could use 500. I’d be willing to pay $7-$8 a month for 500-750Gb. What I’m not willing to do is pay $13 a month for 2TB when I’ll never use more than a quarter of it. I’m sure there’s a lot of people in the same boat, they are willing to cough up a bit more, but not jump up by ~$10 a month for more than they’ll ever need. 

Give me what I want and will use and I’ll be there wallet in hand. Otherwise they’re leaving money on the table.

dewme

DAalseth said:

I wrote Apple a couple of months ago. What I told them was they were leaving money on the table. I have 200GB in iCloud. I really could use 500. I’d be willing to pay $7-$8 a month for 500-750Gb. What I’m not willing to do is pay $13 a month for 2TB when I’ll never use more than a quarter of it. I’m sure there’s a lot of people in the same boat, they are willing to cough up a bit more, but not jump up by ~$10 a month for more than they’ll ever need. 

Give me what I want and will use and I’ll be their wallet in hand. Otherwise they’re leaving money on the table.

I totally agree that some of Apple’s customers would benefit greatly by having a mid-range storage option. I was in the same exact boat but ended up settling on a bundle that includes far more storage than I think I’ll ever need. I’m at a loss to understand why Apple doesn’t do it but I suppose they know something we don’t.

If I had to guess I’d imagine that Apple “overbooks” their storage commitments and actually has less physical storage sitting in data center racks than the sum of all storage that customers are paying for because they know from usage patterns that not everyone maxes out their plans. But they still want to maintain a margin that’s based at a ratio of the sum of all storage plan commitments. So if Apple makes it very inexpensive to go from say  200 GB to 500 GB they may have to start building more data centers to maintain the ratio of physical storage to storage plan commitments. Those data centers don’t come cheap by any means, even with Apple grabbing more money from the table.

This is speculation because I don’t really know whether Apple overbooks physical storage capacity. Many cloud service providers do, both in storage and in server resources, often in a very elastic manner including leasing on-demand when peak demand exceeds in house capacity. I would be very shocked if Apple does not overbook because they would have a massive amount of physical storage space sitting there consuming power for no good reason.

Tower72

I remember reading an article a few years back in which Apple called in the developers of top apps in the store, and pushed them to adopt a subscription model. Before that, things like Netflix and the like, were the only sub based models but after this "meeting", we started seeing more and more things going to it. Weather apps, alarm clock apps, even simple games (there is one that made me realize how idiotic this all became. I will not mention the game, but it was a very simple game, no complex mechanics, no beautiful graphics, it was pretty basic...yet there is was, either pay by the month or by the year). I have also read alot about subscription burn out, and I believe this attributed to it. Personally if I see an app that requires a sub, I keep on browsing. I was a fan of the one time fee (sure I know devs make more with a sub), but last thing I need is to be nickel and dimed to death by this also and have since cancelled a bunch.