Apple turned in another record quarter in its services business, as strong iPhone 15 sales boosted total revenue 2% in the last three months of 2023 — rebounding after four quarters of year-over-year top-line declines.
Apple’s services business grew 11% in the quarter, to $23.1 billion. That was slightly less than analyst predictions of services revenue of $23.31 billion.
The tech company reported total revenue of $119.6 billion, up 2%, and net income of (or $2.18 per share) for the period that ended Dec. 30, which is Apple’s first quarter of fiscal 2024. Overall, Wall Street was expecting December quarter revenue of $117.91 billion and EPS of $2.10. The company noted that its fiscal Q1 2024 quarter had 13 weeks, while the year-earlier period had 14 weeks.
The services segment includes the App Store, Apple Pay and Apple Card; subscription services such as Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Arcade and iCloud; advertising; and payments from Google for search.
Apple in October raised the price of Apple TV+ to $9.99/month in the U.S., up from $6.99 previously. It was the second price hike in a year for the streaming service.
In its flagship iPhone segment, Apple reported revenue of $69.7 billion, up 6%. One area of concern: Sales in the greater China region dropped 13%, to $20.8 billion.
“Today Apple is reporting revenue growth for the December quarter fueled by iPhone sales, and an all-time revenue record in Services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in announcing the results.
Meanwhile, Apple has been touting its next major product release: The Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, a $3,500 device that begins shipping Feb. 2 in the U.S. Partners for the Vision Pro include Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max. While the headset will include more than 600 apps at launch it will not have native apps for Netflix or YouTube.
Apple’s installed base of active devices has now surpassed 2.2 billion, the company said.
