A few weeks before the holiday quarter earnings report, Apple senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, has once more written a celebration of successes with Apple Music, Apple TV, and the App Store.
As Cue first did in 2023, Eddy Cue has summarized what he says is the "remarkable growth... and continuous innovation" of Apple Services in "record-breaking" 2025. Saying that the collection from the App Store through Apple Pay had been "shattering records."
"We marked milestone anniversaries across services, including Apple Podcasts, Music, News, and more — each made possible by the artists, creators, journalists, and storytellers who bring these platforms to life," he said in a statement. Cue backed up his claims with some specifics:
- Apple Pay is now available in 89 markets
- Find My has launched in South Korea
- Apple Fitness+ expanded to 28 more countries and regions
- App Store saw 850 million average weekly users globally
- Apple Pay eliminated over $1 billion in fraud
- Apple Pay saw over $100 billion in merchant sales worldwide
- Apple TV "eclipsed all prior viewership records in December 2025"
- Apple Music reached "all-time highs"
"The numbers reflect the incredible enthusiasm of our customers," said Cue, "whether it's downloading an exciting new app or game, watching the hottest new show with family and friends, listening to their favorite songs, or shopping with peace of mind."
Some of the many Apple services — image credit: Apple
According to Cue, Shazam was used over a billion times per month. Plus he said that Apple Pay now partners with over 11,000 banks and financial bodies.
Tap to Pay on iPhone added 34 more regions in 2025, and is now available in most European countries. The feature is live in 50 regions, and works with over 15 million merchants.
Plus Apple Maps now features 34 cities that have Apple's Detailed City Experience, including the "custom F1 Monaco Grand Prix experience." Find My was supported by 27 more airlines, bringing the total to 36.
Otherwise Cue was more circumspect about figures, saying only that Apple TV's viewership was up 36% year over year. Similarly, while Apple Music "had its best year ever in 2025," Cue has not revealed any metrics about it, or Apple Podcasts, which similarly had its "best year yet" for listeners, plays, and subscribers.
Cue's piece does also plug the Apple One bundle, which it says is available in various configurations in over 100 markets worldwide. Apple One Premier, containing Apple Fitness+, is now available in over 20 markets.
Apple TV launched in 2019 as Apple stepped up its investment in Services — image credit: William Gallagher
At the same time, Cue notes that this full Premier bundle is available with Apple News+, in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK. He does not note that at least the UK version, is missing key features such as the puzzles in Apple News+
How we got here and what can happen next
It's taken 25 years, but Apple's various services now account for a quarter of the company's earnings.
Back in the late 1990s, while we were all wondering whether the iMac would ensure Apple's survival, the company was very quietly starting work what would eventually become a revenue stream most firms would drool over. As Eddy Cue, senior vice president of Services, has just announced, 2025 was a record-breaking year for Apple's collection of services — but it's been getting there for a quarter of a century.
Apple will always have had at least legally-required warranties on its devices, but from around 2000 it began referring to AppleCare insurance. That was the first paid-for service, but around the same time, Apple also launched its free iTools.
That iTools went from free to $100 a year, and it also went through a rename as MobileMe, which eventually became the iCloud — and the iCloud+ — that we have today.
If you still think of Apple as a hardware company, look at its revenue sources over the last few years. Image credit: Malcolm Owen, AppleInsider
Apple does not break out the details of how much it earns from iCloud+, nor any other service. But for the whole of Services, Apple had an all-time revenue high of $28.8 billion in just the last quarter of 2025.
For comparison, in 2024 Q4 revenue from the iPhone was $49.02 billion.
Then while the iPhone 17 range has been a success, overall iPhone sales have been declining. There is a correlation between how many iPhones are sold and how many Services are used, yet Services keeps on rising.
In Q4 2024, Services revenue was $24.7 billion. For 2023, that quarter saw $22.314 billion, and in 2022 it was $19.18 billion.
We'll never know the full breakdown of Services, though in 2023, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) claimed that Apple was doing poorly in convincing device owners to subscribe. It said that there was 60% penetration for paid iCloud storage, but as little as 4% for some AppleCare options.
CIRP's methodology, when it discloses it, tends to be a long way short of robust, and its conclusions can be unsupported by its own data. But there is at least a logic in that until every iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, iPad, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro owner is using all of the Services, there is room to grow even further.
