Apple is in expansion mode when it comes to Apple Pay, with the digital payment service arriving in three new countries.
According to news from 9to5Mac, during a conference call to discuss fiscal second-quarter results with Wall Street on Tuesday (May 1), Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook confirmed Apple Pay will make its debut in Norway, Poland, and the Ukraine in the next several months. Cook said Apple Pay exhibited good growth during the first three months of the year, with active users more than doubling year over year. Additionally, the CEO said total transactions tripled on a year-over-year basis.
“We believe the availability of Apple Pay at major transit systems has been a key driver of adoption among commuters, and in March, we launched Express Transit with Apple Pay in Beijing and Shanghai — the second- and third-largest transit systems in the world,” Cook was quoted as saying by 9to5Mac.
For its fiscal second quarter, Apple’s revenue increased 16 percent year over year to $61.1 billion — its fastest growth in two years and ahead of analyst estimates of $60.9 billion. Forecasts for next quarter’s revenue fell in the range of $51.5 billion to $53.5 billion, also ahead of Wall Street. Apple sold 52.2 million iPhones in the fiscal second quarter, up a slim 2.9 percent from a year earlier and slightly below the 52.3 million analysts had been looking for on average. That said, iPhone sales were well ahead of many of the diminished predictions of the last few weeks, as data from supplier component sales made the rounds among investors. Price per phone also came in a bit below the average investor consensus of $740, at $728 per phone.
Away from the core iPhone business, Apple reported record services revenue of $9.2 billion, a 31 percent growth rate year over year and a handy beat on analysts’ $8.3 billion forecast. Cook noted all of the services’ component parts — the App Store, Apple Music, iCloud storage and Apple Pay — posted record results in sales and growth of at least 25 percent year over year (though they didn’t go into specific numbers).
Apple estimates its Services will be a $50 billion annual business by 2021. Cook also said that the company now has 270 million paid subscribers across all of its applications and services as of the end of the March quarter, up by 100 million from the same period a year earlier.