iPhone maker Apple Inc. recently announced a record revenue growth of whopping $111.4 billion in the Q1 2021. This is a 21% year-over-year rise aided by double-digit growth in every product category of the company. The sales of the iPhone smartphones rose significantly 17% year-over-year to nearly around $65.6 billion during the first quarter of the availability of the iPhone 12. The services business by Apple too – that includes services of the App Store, cloud services, advertising, Apple Music, Apple Pay and Apple TV+, grew significantly from 24% to $15.8 billion. The wearables sector, home and accessories sector sales rose around 30% to nearly $13 billion.
The growth is all-time revenue record that highlights that the company successfully overcame the challenges of COVID-19, with specific areas of its business earning a massive boost with more consumers on board. Apple confirmed that the scheduled changes by Apple to its Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) will take effect on “early spring.” It also stated that the new policy would enhance the data privacy challenges that are faced by mobile marketers.
Apple Q1 Results: A few things to know…
The record revenue in Q1 2021 by Apple, across its every facet of business, is a reminder of how central Apple company remains for its mobile marketing business. Its popular growth and active base of iPhones is now more than 1 billion as the consumer enthusiasm for the developed features of the iPhone 12 is growing sales significantly. However, the growth of Apple is magnum in its services business than the iPhone market. The company exceeded its defined target of 600 million paid subscriptions before 2020-end, as stated by CFO Luca Maestri. The key drivers of the Apple services growth include the installed base across the primary product categories, transacting and paid accounts on its digital content outlets and paid subscriptions.
Amongst the services is Apple Pay, which is now available in 90% of stores across the U.S. Touchless payments at present have become significant due to the pandemic situation and as consumers look for safer shopping experiences. While the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the AppleCare and advertising services, the company saw a massive acceleration in the advertising sector in its last quarter. “The search advertising business is doing great,” Cook stated earlier on an earnings call, attributing the success to Apple’s privacy policies. “We are progressing on that area.”
The scheduled changes of IDFA are primary to Apple’s data privacy policies. The changes will require app developers to seek opt-in permissions from all new users. The next beta version of the iOS by Apple will include this new change and will launch in “early spring.” Meanwhile, a recent survey stated that more than half of the Apple marketers are expecting a negative effect from the scheduled changes. Amid the IDFA and other regulatory changes to the privacy policies, collecting first-party data is always crucial for marketers across all categories.
Facebook utilized its own earnings call recently to continue its attacks on the scheduled privacy changes by Apple. This came after last year’s warning that the privacy change will cause a 50% drop in revenue for the Audience Network. “Many small businesses will fail to connect with their customers with targeted ads,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated. “Though Apple may say that the scheduled changes are for the benefit of people, but the moves clearly show their competitive interests.”
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