If Betteridge’s Law of Headlines applies to most websites, then it must apply to AppleVillagers, too, right?
Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.
What’s Apple’s latest secret? It must be the rapidly growing Services segment, right?
- $31.05 billion iPhone
- $11.45 billion: Services
- $5.51 billion: Mac
- $5.13 billion: Wearables, Home and Accessories
- $4.87 billion: iPad
There it is. Right below iPhone and growing fast. Funny thing. True story. Services has been around for years and only became a trendy topic at Apple as the company’s customer base crossed a billion.
What’s the real new secret to Apple’s success? It’s in the list above.
Last year Apple stopped listing how many iPhones, iPads, and Macs it sold each quarter, so we’re left to guesses, but the company still has a list of how much revenue each major segment brought in.
See it?
Right after the Mac, and ahead of the iPad, is the newest of new legs on Apple’s very sturdy chair of financials. Wearables, Home, and Accessories. Or, put another way, Watch, AirPods, Beats headphones, and accessories that get lapped up by a billion customers.
We’re not talking apps, App Store, subscription pricing, or AppleCare. We’re talking more hardware. Apple is a hardware company, Services notwithstanding (where would it be without hardware?).
Ben Lovejoy saw it, too.
Watch, AirPods, HomePod, and accessories now worth as much to Apple as the iPad
That’s not quite true. Revenue is just one component of the financial mix, and with the Mac and iPod selling at much higher prices than Watch, AirPods, or HomePod, it’s likely Apple’s profits are more impressive among the former, but the mix is impressive nonetheless.
Wearables is the new name for Other. Nobody paid much attention to other, but since iPhone sales have stopped growing and actually slumped in the past year, accessories are the new game in town.
No, accessories– or, rather, Wearables— are not exactly new to Apple. Tim Cook, after all, is the King of iPhone Accessories (compared to co-founder Steve Jobs who was the King of Market Disruption). Yes, Apple remains a hardware company, because accessories are hardware, but Services now accounts for more revenue than Mac and iPad combined.
What does that say?
Is Apple still the iPhone company? More or less. What should be obvious is that Apple has more well integrated revenue and profit streams than any competitor South of Samsung. Nothing in this missive should be considered a secret. Accessories has been around for a long, long time– as Other– and Services, too. The real difference today is not a secret, either.
Apple has more than a billion hardware customers who buy services and accessories.