MacDirectory Magazine

Stephen Hanson

MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.

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Apple's Ecosystem+ By Horace Dediu According to one estimate, in 2019 Apple's ecosystem was approximately $519 billion. This includes both transactions that Apple handles, such as paid apps, as well as purchases and other economic activity that happened through apps in which Apple is not involved in the transaction, such as Uber, Bird or Bond rides. A fraction ($48 billion or 9.3%) of this total is reported as part of Apple's financial statements as "Services Revenues". The rest ($471 billion) is reported on other financial statements, typically businesses which use apps to book sales. These are app revenues are not even accounted as "Payments to Developers" as they are not paid directly to any developer. The attention to Apple's terms and conditions with developers only apply to transactions in the area shown in green. The grey area is all outside the App Stores and attracts no attention. The attention paid to Apple's new services including the "+" brands of TV, News, Arcade, Music and now Fitness and the new bundling thereof refers to the area shown in black above. The Green and Black areas are also captured through subscriptions whose quantity is charted with triangles below. Note that the latest quarter saw an acceleration in the accumulation of subscriptions, putting the 600 million target set for end of this year closer than expected. Note also the change in slope of the yellow line as the triangles were added. These two charts are an attempt to illustrate what is a huge set of activities. Apple's product lines may be something we can grasp in terms of objects for sale and price points, and feature sets, etc. But the Ecosystem that sits on top of these devices is not comprehensible. There are literally millions of apps, services, and ways of delivering and capturing value. There are millions of people employed in what amounts to an economy bigger than the 25th largest in the world (Belgium (1)). It's half a trillion dollars of activity. Given the growth of the underlying Services segment (~15%), it's probably going to double in 5 years to $1 trillion. Apple will certainly benefit as even if only 9% of that is

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