Apple Music revenues grew 50% in past 12 months, overtakes Spotify in the US

“Apple Music grew by over 50% on a year-over-year basis,” reported Apple CEO Tim Cook during an earnings call after the world’s most valued tech company posted record results for its third fiscal quarter.

“Were moving along at a very, very good rate,” Cook added.

“It appears to us… that we took the leadership position in North America during the quarter and we had the leadership position in Japan, so in some of the markets that we’ve been in for a long period of time, we’re doing quite well.”

This is the first time that Apple has officially claimed that it has overtaken Spotify in the US (although Cook did not mention the Swedish company by name).

As reported in TMN earlier this week, this achievement was already revealed by a number of financial and tech publications.

Cook says that the streaming service was “well over” 50 million current subscribers and free trial users.

However, with 83 million subscribers, the Swede still rules internationally.

Cook took pains to point out that outside of China, there are only 200 million streaming subscribers for all services.

Hence he said, there was a huge room to grow, not just for Apple but for all services.

“But really the key thing in music is not the competition between the companies that are providing music, the real challenge is to grow the market,” he said.

“It does seem to me there’s an extraordinary opportunity in that business to grow the market well and I think if we put our emphasis there, which we’re doing, that we’ll be a beneficiary of that — as other people will as well.”

Apple surpassed all market expectations by posting $53.3 billion, up 17% from 2017’s Q3, while profit was up 32% to $11.52 billion.

Of this, $9.55 billion was from its service division, which includes digital music.

Cook added, ”We’re thrilled to report Apple’s best June quarter ever, and our fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth.

“Our Q3 results were driven by continued strong sales of iPhone, services, and wearables, and we are very excited about the products and services in our pipeline.”

These three new iPhones, an iPad Pro model with Face ID and a redesigned Apple Watch.

With current market cap of $935 billion and continua sales of its expensive iPhones, Apple is on track to become the first trillion dollar company in the US.

Its international sales accounted for 60% of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple is about to announce a major project as part of its plans for TV content.

In Q3, iPhone sales were up 20% in revenue, to $29.9 billion, and up 1% to  41.3 billion units.

Wearables and other products brought in $3.7 billion, a 37% increase year-on-year.