Apple has over 745m paid service subscribers, company claims

The Primephonic website is no longer available but it looked like this

Apple has announced that its services now count over 745 million paid subscribers, confirmed it will roll new features it acquired with its purchase of classical music service, Primephonic and noted that Apple Pay is now supported by over 9,000 of the world’s banks.

What Apple said

Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Services, said: “Apple’s world-class portfolio of services proved essential in 2021, as people worldwide sought new ways to keep entertained, informed, connected, and inspired.

“With over 745 million paid subscriptions, Apple continues to connect the world’s developers, artists, and storytellers with users across more than a billion devices, delivering powerful tools, content, and experiences that enrich their lives in profound ways every day.”

Primephonic is coming

Apple says that later this year, listeners can look forward to even more global premieres, exclusives, in-depth interviews, livestreams, DJ mixes, and the world’s best streaming experience for classical music augmented by features from Primephonic, plus better browsing and search capabilities, detailed displays of classical music metadata, and much more.

The services push really isn’t trivial…

What else Apple announced

In a press release that seemed a little light on news but high on general insight into Apple’s growing services business, the company did let slip a couple of lesser or unknown data points:

• There are now over 600 million App Store users across 175 nations.
• Developers have shared over $260 billion since the App Store launched in 2008 – that’s up $60 billion on this time last year.
• Apple Books now has a library of over 8 million books and audiobooks, including a vast catalog of free titles.
• Apple Books serves over 100 million users each month
• Apple Pay is available in nearly 60 countries and regions, and works with nearly 9,000 bank partners worldwide.
• Customers used 30 million NFC tickets in Wallet for events across music, sports, theater, and more across the US and Canada in 2021.
• Apple Fitness+ now offers almost 2,000 routines.
• Apple Plus shows have been nominated for 763 awards and have won 190 of them.

While deftly avoiding sharing an actual number, Apple also says App Store customers spent more than ever before between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, driving double-digit growth from last year.

The company also repeated a pretty significant move it made in the last 12-months, making use of Shazam to identify the creators featured in the thousands of popular DJ mixes available on the service so that they can get paid.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.