Apple announced its App Store spending crossed $1.22 billion between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Customers also spent over $322 million on New Year’s Day 2019 alone, setting a new single-day record.
'The App Store had a record-breaking holiday week and New Year's Day. Thanks to the inspiring work of our talented developers and the support of our incredible customers around the world, the App Store finished off an outstanding 2018 and kicked off 2019 with a bang,' said Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing.
The App Store spending has helped drive Services revenue to an all-time record in the holiday quarter. Apple services set new all-time records in multiple categories, including the App Store, Apple Music, Cloud Services, Apple Pay and the App Store’s search ad business.
According to Apple, Gaming and self-care were the most popular categories of app downloads and subscriptions during the holidays. Productivity, Health and Fitness and Education apps are already capturing the attention of customers in the first few days of the year with 1Password, Sweat and Lumosity charting in their respective categories.
Earlier this week, CEO Tim Cook in an open letter to its investors announced to lower its revenue guidance for its 2019 fiscal quarter which ended on December 29. Cook now expects revenue of approximately $84 billion, gross margin of approximately 38 per cent and operating expenses of approximately $8.7 billion.
'Services generated over $10.8 billion in revenue during the quarter, growing to a new quarterly record in every geographic segment, and we are on track to achieve our goal of doubling the size of this business from 2016 to 2020,' said Cook.
