Here’s how Apple is making its money outside of iPhone sales (AAPL)

pulse

May 3, 2017 11:31 PM

Services like the App Store and Apple Music are the rising star at Apple.

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Apple announced its latest quarterly earnings on Tuesday, and the results were mixed. Revenue and iPhone sales were still huge, but a bit below expectations.

The star of the show, again, was Apple’s services business, which includes the likes of the App Store, Apple Pay, Apple Music, iTunes, iCloud, and similar programs. Apple said the segment generated $7.04 billion in revenue this past quarter, the second straight quarter it’s crossed the $7 billion threshold, and a $1.05 billion rise year-over-year.

As this chart from Statista shows, that means Apple’s services business has grown more than $3 billion since this time in 2013. It’s surpassed the Mac and iPad’s contributions along the way.

While Apple is still a hardware company at heart, the services narrative has become an increasingly popular one for the company. As the growth of iPhone, iPad, and Mac sales has slowed, those services allow Apple to get more cash from the big user base it already has, and on a more consistent basis at that. If people like those services, they’re probably more likely to buy more of the Apple devices that use them along the way.

pulse