Apple Music surpasses Spotify subscriber numbers in North America
Apple announced Q3 financial results on July 31, showing $53.3 billion in revenue. This presents a 17 percent year-over-year increase, marking the tech company’s best June quarter ever. CEO Tim Cook commented, “Our Q3 results were driven by continued strong sales of iPhone, Services and Wearables, and we are very excited about the products and services in our pipeline.”
“Our strong business performance drove revenue growth in each of our geographic segments, net income of $11.5 billion, and operating cash flow of $14.5 billion,” says Apple CFO Luca Maestri. “We returned almost $25 billion to investors through our capital return program during the quarter, including $20 billion in share repurchases.” iPhone sales increased 1 percent YOY bringing in $41.3 billion, whereas wearables and other products brought in $3.7 billion, a 37 percent increase YOY.
Apple Music received a nod, adding the streaming service has more than 50 million current subscribers and free trial users; Apple Music revenues grew more than 50 percent during the quarter. Cook mentioned this made Apple Music the market leader in North America (by a fraction) as both Spotify and Apple report around 20 million users in the region. The CEO also mentioned Apple is leading the global streaming leader in Japan.
Outside of China, there are less than 200 million people streaming around the world, so music streaming is still a growing market. Cook added, “But really the key thing in music is not the competition between the companies that are providing music, the real challenge is to grow the market. It does seem to me there’s an extraordinary opportunity in that business to grow the market well and I think if we put our emphasis there, which we’re doing, that we’ll be a beneficiary of that — as other people will as well.”
A major difference between Apple Music and Spotify is Apple does not have a free service beyond its three-month trial period.
H/T: Billboard
Photo credit: Jess Watters/Unsplash
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