“In a conference call for Wall Street analysts and media late Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer spent considerable time reviewing the company’s leading online app store in iTunes and its vast developer community,” Patrick Seitz writes for Investor’s Business Daily. “[Cook said], ‘We have the strongest ecosystem in the industry with app stores in 155 countries, iTunes music stores in 119 countries, hundreds of millions of iCloud users around the world, and most importantly, the highest loyalty and customer satisfaction rates in the business.’ Cook knocked Android’s ecosystem as being ‘fragmented.'”
“Apple’s iTunes store passed $4 billion in revenue for the first time ever in the March quarter, giving it an annual run rate of $16 billion, Oppenheimer said. Sunday marks the 10-year anniversary of the iTunes Music Store, he said. The iOS app store portion of iTunes debuted nearly five years ago, in July 2008,” Seitz writes. “The iTunes store includes an unmatched amount of content, including 35 million music tracks, 1.75 million books, 60,000 movies and more than 850,000 apps.”
Seitz writes, “Apple device users have downloaded more than 45 billion apps and developers have made more than $9 billion from those sales, Oppenheimer said. Apple’s app store accounted for 74% of all app sales worldwide in the March quarter, research firm Canalys reported. Apple’s app store offers a superior experience to rival platforms because of its ‘careful curation’ of ‘quality’ apps, Oppenheimer said. ISI Group analyst Brian Marshall says Apple has a “best-in-class ecosystem” that engenders customer loyalty and market share gains.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Apple’s earnings report: 4 big red flags – April 24, 2013
Cash cow: Apple’s new pitch to investors – April 24, 2013
Apple: What’s eating America’s Favorite Tech Company? – April 24, 2013
Pressure builds on Apple to make a move – April 24, 2013
Apple just changed everything, again – April 24, 2013
Apple preparing to unleash a blizzard of new products, says source – April 24, 2013
Why Apple’s Q213 earnings make it a fist-pounding buy – April 23, 2013
Piper Jaffray’s Munster: Apple’s going into a good year – April 23, 2013
Apple opens bank vault to dole out $100 billion to shareholders; $60 billion in buybacks the largest in history – April 23, 2013
Debt-free Apple plans to borrow to finance massive capital-return program – April 23, 2013
Apple beats Street on EPS and revenue; ups quarterly dividend by 15%; ups buybacks to $60 billion – April 23, 2013