Apple talks up services, but still mainly a device firm
Wall Street and Tim Cook want investors to look at Apple and see an orange.
There has been a growing focus recently on Apple’s “services” business, which generated nine per cent of the company’s revenue in the last year, or more than US$21 billion. The money represents Apple’s share of sales of digital music and TV downloads on iTunes, purchases on the App Store, subscriptions to Apple Music, AppleCare warranties and digital file and photo storage on iCloud. This side business for Apple rings up more sales than Starbucks ($19.7 billion) does in a year. Not too shabby.
A developing investment theory is that this business is transforming Apple into something resembling Netflix, AT&T or other companies for which people pay regularly for a continuing service. Investors tend to love businesses with a predictable stream of money coming in the door and not, say, consumer hardware companies whose fortunes rise and fall with the release of each shiny new gadget.
While Apple’s services business is big and has the potential to be much bigger, it is premature to say Apple is changing into a different variety of fruit.
Many of Apple’s services are sporadic purchases that won’t sustain company revenue if the iPhone growth machine sputters to a halt. Too many of them simply aren’t good enough — cough, iTunes; cough cough, Apple Music — which should restrain hopes of a coming Apple services juggernaut. And if the company wants investors to start valuing Apple like they do web services companies such as Netflix, Apple needs to dole out more financial metrics to prove its services are as recurring as online video subscriptions.
Apple itself is intentionally feeding the attempted shift in investment philosophy. For the first time, the company in January disclosed that more than one billion Apple devices were in active use. The implication was that Apple has the power to persuade people who own those billion gadgets to buy more of its digital doodads. “Financially it provides a great potential opportunity,” Cook said in a February interview with Fortune.
It’s hard to quibble with US$20 billion in revenue, but there’s less than meets the eye. Based on some rough math around Apple’s disclosures of App Store billings, the biggest component of Apple’s services revenue is from App Store purchases. There are two problems with the app dependence.
One, the pace of sales growth on the App Store appears to be slowing, from 50 per cent to the 40 per cent range in one year.
Two, it’s hard to imagine the App Store becoming a steady stream of sales like a monthly Netflix bill. Apple also hasn’t addressed the relationship between sales of devices and services. Do customers buy more app downloads over time, or do they make a flurry of purchases when they buy a new iPhone and then few or even none?
The same device dependency question applies to the company’s AppleCare warranty program, which Credit Suisse estimates is the second-biggest component of Apple’s services revenue.
The company isn’t likely to sell a device warranty unless it sells a new device.
To get credit for the potential of its services business, the notoriously secretive Apple also needs to open up more. Even basic questions about the habits of Apple device owners remain a mystery. One simple one: Does an iPhone owner spend more on iCloud, Apple Music or App Store purchases over time or not?
If Apple wants investors to believe it’s more than a hardware company, it needs to give more metrics that are commonplace for web services or subscription software companies, like average revenue per user or lifetime customer value. Sometimes those numbers are bogus, but they do give outsiders better clues about what revenue is predictable.
The company has mostly treated its services as features to improve the selling point of its devices, but Apple also could do much more if it wanted to maximize average revenue from each user. A customer who buys a Rihanna song on iTunes could receive pitches to buy her biography or a concert video from Apple, too. People are used to this kind of cross-selling from Amazon, but I’m not sure they would like this kind of pushiness from Apple.
It can’t be a coincidence that Apple found enthusiasm for services just as sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs are all expected to decline this year. Until Apple can prove its services can stand independently from its devices, Apple remains a hardware company. Full stop.