Roger Fingas
Excluding a one-time payment, Apple's services revenue rose 27 percent during the September quarter to $9.981 billion, aided by the company's usual suspects but in no small part by a sharp rise in Apple Pay transactions.
The company tripled its Apple Pay transaction volumes year-over-year, CEO Tim Cook said during a results call. This is presumably owing not just to regional expansions but better support in the U.S., where chains like Costco and CVS recently completed rollouts.
Some 60 percent of all U.S. retail shops support Apple Pay, according to Cook, the ratio rising to 71 percent among the top 100 chains. That does exclude two of the biggest chains, Target and Walmart, both of which have actively avoided Apple Pay or indeed any other third-party mobile platform.
Several other services such as Apple Music and the App Store achieved quarterly records, and Cook noted that there are now roughly 330 million paid subscriptions across its ecosystems. The CEO didn't immediately break down this data.
Apple's overall Q4 revenue hit $62.9 billion, driven mostly by sales of 46.9 million iPhones, which on their own reaped $37.2 billion.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
William Gallagher
Sponsored Content
8 Comments
Bonkers. This holiday quarter is going to be through the roof.
The reason Walmart and Target won't adopt Apple Pay is because they insist on reaping enormous amounts of financial, purchase, and personal data about their customers, and while Apple Pay gives them even less than other systems, they can't let Android Pay in without also allowing Apple Pay to work, so they don't use any third-party mobile-wallet systems.
That's their choice and I'm not one to call for boycotts indiscriminately, but Walmart has always been evil and Target has had more security breaches of its data than just about any large company, so for me it has been extremely easy to avoid patronising either company, and I'd suggest others do the same -- and tell them why you're shopping elsewhere.
Nowhere near enough outlets are accepting NFC, Apple Watch, Apple Pay, or even Android Pay.
I was in Eastern Europe last year, and I could use my Apple Watch at almost every outlet. It's true that many of the retail employees had never experienced their items being paid for using the Apple Watch, but store management were not dwelling in the backwaters of technology, like most US retailers, and had invested in the newest technology.