Stephen Silver
Apple CEO Tim Cook on an earnings call Wednesday said that the company set a new record for the most FaceTime call volume during the holiday season.
Apple broke a lot of records in the holiday quarter of 2020, from revenues to sales of different products to income from Services. It turns out the company broke another record over Christmas as it recorded the highest-ever volume of FaceTime calls.
Cook, during Apple's quarterly earnings call, stated that "as COVID-19 kept us apart, we saw the highest volume of FaceTime calls ever this Christmas."
It is unclear if "this Christmas" refers to Dec. 25, the surrounding weeks, or the entire holiday quarter. Cook did not specify an exact amount of FaceTime call volume.
The record, though, is not surprising, especially with friends and family physically apart for the holidays last year due to coronavirus restrictions. In addition, as stated on the call, the install base for iPhone is the largest it has ever been, and Cook said that Apple had a record number of activations in the last week of the quarter.
On the call, Cook also thanked his staff, including Apple Store employees, for their work over the holidays.
"As always, we could not have made so many holidays special without our talented and dedicated retail teams who helped us achieve a new all-time revenue record for retail, driven by very strong performance on our online store," the CEO said.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
3 Comments
My wife’s family tries to have a Zoom call every weekend. It’s such a pain. We have to help everyone get connected every single time. Once we get everyone connected there are frequently people who are experiencing some kind of audio issue that needs to be sorted.
Last weekend one sister couldn’t make it. She’s the only one that doesn’t have an Apple device. Since she wasn’t going to participate we elected to go with FaceTime and, no surprise, everything was seamless.
Apple should take Facetime and expand it into larger group level semi-enterprise video conference tool like Zoom and offer on all platforms. Bundle with other services.