Apple Makes TV App One Stop Shop For Subscriptions

Adopting an Amazon-like strategy, Apple wants to sell subscriptions directly through its television app. That marks a departure from the current setup that asks users to subscribe through individual apps, Bloomberg reported.

The move would make Apple’s devices — such as Apple TV, iPads and iPhones — destinations for finding, watching and purchasing content. Apple already aggregates content from other providers, but customers have to purchase access to that content through individual apps downloaded from its App Store. In all, the new strategy could help Apple bolster its line of services. As it stands, Apple expects to bring in $50 billion in revenue per year through services by 2021.

While Apple declined to discuss the project with Bloomberg, the move comes as Apple is focusing on services for growth while iPhone sales are slowing. And the company has seen some results: Sales of services grew more than 30 percent over the most recent quarter, generating $9.2 billion.

The news comes as Apple revenue increased 16 percent year-on-year to $61.1 billion in the fiscal second quarter — its fastest growth in two years and ahead of analyst estimates of $60.9 billion. Forecasts for next quarter’s revenue fell in the range of $51.5 billion to $53.5 billion, also ahead of Wall Street.

Apple sold 52.2 million iPhones in the fiscal second quarter, up a slim 2.9 percent from a year earlier and slightly below the 52.3 million that analysts had been looking for on average. That said, iPhone sales were well ahead of many of the diminished predictions of the last few weeks as data from supplier component sales made the rounds among investors. Price per phone also came in a bit below the average investor consensus of $740, at $728 per phone.

Away from the core iPhone business, Apple CEO Tim Cook noted that all of the services component parts — the App Store, Apple Music, iCloud storage and Apple Pay — posted record results in sales and growth of at least 25 percent year on year (though they did not break out any more specific numbers).