Apple Services went beyond the company’s expectations with an over 26 percent increase year over year during its second fiscal quarter for 2021.
The rise in Services revenue, which hit an all-time record of $16.9 billion USD, was attributed to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and users working from home. The $3.5 billion increase in Apple Services revenue – from $13.4 billion in 2020 – was revealed during Apple’s latest earnings call. It’s not totally positive as services like AppleCare+ and advertising saw a decrease with the lack of retail stores, other services saw more of an increase.
“Our services business did better than what we were expecting when we had the last call in January, it was stronger across the board, ” said CFO Luca Maestri. “One of the things that we’ve noticed is that throughout COVID was that obviously digital services have done very well.”
The previously mentioned services were negatively suffered by the pandemic but it seems a change is beginning. Most notably Apple Care saw a return in growth during the March quarter with consumer sentiment improving and it seems advertising is making a comeback as well. Apple did not reveal what its plans or expectation for growing Services, but did say that the iPhone company is certainly more positive on it now.
“As we are adding new services, are we improving the quality of the existing services and so when we look at all these fundamental factors of our services business, obviously we feel very good about it,” Maestri said.
Apple Services includes the company’s push into other industries through its devices like music/video streaming, gaming, fitness and more. Back in September Apple announced Apple One, a bundle for users to subscribe to all of Apple’s services under one umbrella which includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, Fitness+ and iCloud Storage.
