Steve Jobs probably wouldn’t have predicted it, but between Apple’s growing collection of music, photo, payments, video, and news offerings, services are becoming a major piece of the company’s $230 billion in annual revenue.
This week, Apple announced its latest acquisition: Next Issue Media which offers a digital subscription service called Texture with 200 major titles. The $10 monthly package includes Esquire, Consumer Reports, National Geographic and other titles. It was created in 2009 by major magazine publishers such as Condé Nast and Hearst as a sort of “Hulu for magazines,” although it met little fanfare. A 2015 makeover sought to make it more relevant for readers migrating to apps, social media, and aggregators.
Sales from Next Issue Media will now be added the $8 billion in revenue that Apple earns each quarter from its various services, more than Mac and iPads. And Apple has said it expects to earn $10 billion from services per quarter by 2020.
But all of those categories still pale in comparison to the iPhone, which generated $141 billion in revenue last year.