Apple's App Store customers spent a record $540 million on
New Year's Day alone, marking a 40% increase from last year, the company said
Wednesday in its annual services report.
On top of that, Apple announced it generated $1.8 billion in
App Store sales of digital goods and services in the week between Christmas Eve
and New Year's Eve and now has 90 million monthly active users for its Apple
Books app.
But the report didn't provide updates on subscribers for its
suite of newer subscription products such as Apple TV+, its video streaming
service; Apple Music and Apple Fitness+, which is a Peloton competitor. In the
fall, Apple began bundling many of its subscription services together as part
of its Apple One program. The services category is a key growth area Apple has
focused on in recent years as hardware sales growth has fallen.
Apple's App Store update also comes as tensions continue to
rise over Apple's control over its App Store policies. Several app developers,
most notably Facebook and Fortnite maker Epic Games, have publicly criticized
Apple for taking a 30% cut of App Store sales from developers and for enforcing
a new policy designed to disclose which apps track your data for targeted
advertising.
Apple recently altered its policies to take a 15% cut from
companies that generate less than $1 million in App Store sales, which the
company said was a move to help small businesses.
Overall, Apple's services generated revenue of $53.8 billion
in the company's last fiscal year, which ended in September 2021. Apple is
expected to report its fiscal first-quarter earnings in a few weeks.