AppleInsider Staff
In somewhat of a surprise from Tuesday's quarterly conference call, it was announced that iTunes Software and Services generated $3.9 billion, which represents a whopping 25 percent increase compared to the year-ago period.
With strong iPhone sales hitting 31.2 million for Apple's third fiscal quarter, the company's digital sales saw a substantial year-over-year bump in revenue off music, video, apps, and e-books with $3.9 billion in revenue. Despite being down from the record $4.1 billion the service pulled in a last quarter, the number is up 25 percent from the year ago period.
According to the latest statistics provided by Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, iTunes billings were at $4.3 billion, while the App Store's best week of the trailing three months was the last week of the June quarter. The executive said some 1 billion TV episodes have been downloaded from the digital storefront since its inception, while more than 800,000 shows, and 350,000 movies, are downloaded each day.
After celebrating the App Store's fifth anniversary earlier in July, Apple noted on Tuesday that the number of iOS titles up for offer has slowly grown to 900,000, 375,000 of which are designed especially for iPad.
Developers have made $11 billion from App Store sales, half of which came from the last four quarters.
Started 10 years ago as a means to bolster Apple's iPod, iTunes has blossomed into a media and software powerhouse. The storefront now pulls in more than five times more revenue than the division it initially supported.
Amber Neely
Andrew Orr
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Chip Loder
8 Comments
Good to see Apple get a ray of sunshine by setting realistic expectations and then beating them.
When they first broke out software/iTunes as a separate entity it was a pretty big indicator on where it was heading and I think it is going to start playing an incrementally larger factor in their income.
As hardware margins are going to continue to get downward pressure, iTunes is a great offset to that. Lower margins can drive more users which will only help spur iTunes.
Wall St has its head up its bum. :D Down $2 from when I came on line. $7 fall so far for the day. Idiots edit: I'd forgotten the earning report today. That explains the drop. Aftermarket trading has Apple up at 435 ish.
Hopefully these sort of figures will help studios be convinced that Apple should give more control, vis-a-vis, digital rights management to its customers...
No questions or comments about the little security matter that has kept Apple's developer website off-line for 5+ days?
But but ANDROID is going to overtake the App Store in app downloads very soon ! Apple is doomed !