Named Apple's Most Popular Services - What Are You Using?

Apple has several paid services, the total income from which is constantly growing. But how do you know how things are, for example, with Apple TV +, Apple Arcade or Apple Music, if Apple prefers not to publish the number of subscribers? The company, from time to time, reports on the successes of Apple Pay and Apple Card (these are also services), but only others know that they still exist. And that total revenue is growing. Last week, the network published a study of the subscription music services market in 2019, and now we know the truth about one of the apple services.

Some services Apple failed to launch successfully

How many people use Apple TV +

Judging by indirect evidence, with Apple TV + and Apple News +, to put it mildly, not everything is safe. The presentation of Apple News + at the March Apple event in 2019 was talented, everyone immediately wanted to try this service - for very little money, access to the paid content of many publications, subscribing to each of them is several times more expensive than subscribing to this service, it seemed to many a bargain. The number of subscribers has increased rapidly, which Tim Cook was pleased to announce at the opening of WWDC in early June.

In the first two weeks, hundreds of thousands of people signed up for the service. Spiteful critics claim that in June the number of subscribers decreased, and a miracle did not happen. Service deceived expectations, being almost useless. Apple TV + is even worse. Tens of millions who have bought a Mac, iPhone, iPad or Apple TV in recent months have a preferential (free) annual subscription to this service.

According to indirect sources, the service has approximately 10 million real subscribers, which I doubt. Even if there are actually 10 million of them, this is less than that of Hulu, Netflix and Disney +. But most likely, the real number of subscribers willing to pay for using the service does not exceed 5 million.

How many people use Apple Music

According to a study by Counterpoint Research, in 2019 the number of paid subscribers to all music services in the world reached 358 million people, an increase of 32% compared to 2018. In 2020, as Counterpoint Research experts suggest, despite the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences, there will be even more subscribers to paid music services, up 25%, to grow to 450 million. That is, the number of subscribers will continue to grow, only slower. Wait and see.

Spotify is still a leader among music services

Among music services, Spotify leads. 35% of 358 million subscribers. And 34% of the income earned by all music services in 2019. The fee charged from subscribers is 80% of the revenue of services, the remaining 20% comes from advertising. In second place, both in terms of the number of subscribers (19%) and income (24%) - Apple Music. Amazon Music is in third place (15% of the total number of subscribers in the world), and in fourth place is Tencent Music (11%). YouTube Music is in fifth place, with 6%. The total share of other music services is 14%.

About services with which everything is fine, Apple is pleased to announce publicly. In June 2019, at a press conference on the occasion of the opening of WWDC, Tim Cook announced the number of Apple Music subscribers - at that time there were 60 million of them. It seems to be true: at the end of 2019, there were 68.2 million of them.

What happens to Apple TV +

Apple TV + is popular, but now I can’t shoot new TV shows

Because of the pandemic, paid video services are on the rise. Disney + (a service that started later than Apple TV +) and Amazon Prime Video have a fast-paced subscriber growth. The vast majority of the inhabitants of the apple ecosystem use Prime Video applications for watching tvOS and iOS / iPadOS for watching videos. In fact, Apple admitted defeat: in the latest version of the Prime Video application, it became possible to buy or rent video content.

At the same time, for the first time in the history of iOS and iOS-like operating systems, Apple allowed using its own Amazon service in this application, instead of the apple service. For all ten years of the existence of the Apple IAP (sales service from the application) this has never happened, and simply could not be. In IAP, 30% of the purchase payment goes to Apple. The terms of the contract under which Amazon was suddenly allowed to use its own service are unknown, but it is almost certain that Amazon will pay Apple a lower percentage.

However, we will not escalate. In iOS / iPadOS 14, Apple seems to be about to end the tight isolation of the apple ecosystem from the rest of the world by allowing third-party applications to be set as the default browser and email client. And for Apple TV + this may not have anything to do.