Bought an iPhone 11? Apple expects you to follow that up with another purchase

Tim Cook and Apple’s chief finance officer this week hailed the iPhone 11 for successfully continuing to draw new customers into Apple’s wider “ecosystem”.

Cook spoke surprisingly candidly during Apple’s Q1 2020 earnings call this week, admitting that the iPhone and Apple’s other devices represent more than just products.

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Apple wants consumers to buy into its ecosystem, and for one purchase to lead to the purchase of another Apple product, or to a subscription or a download. In Tim Cook’s ideal world, Apple infiltrates every part of your life.

Cook said, during the earnings call: “With each Apple product that a customer buys, I think they get tighter into the ecosystem, because they like − that’s the reason that they’re buying into it − is they like the experience, the customer experience.

“And so, from that point of view, I think each of our products can drive another product. I would think in that case, it’s more likely that the iPhone comes first. But there is no doubt in my mind that there is some people that came into the ecosystem for the Watch.”

Currently, the iPhone 11 is Apple’s main lure, the one that’s expected above all others to coax customers into Apple’s ecosystem. And it appears to be doing the job nicely.

However, there’s certainly something slight unsettling about the fact Apple so clearly isn’t satisfied by just selling you just one (expensive) product. The company wants more buy-in from everyone it interacts with, and uses features like its much-criticised Lightning cable to prevent the Apple products in your life from co-existing conveniently with non-Apple products.

While Apple doesn’t disclose the exact amount of iPhone sales anymore, the company did explain the extent of their services business.

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“Customer engagement in our ecosystem continues to grow and the number of both transacting and paid accounts on our digital content stores reached a new all-time high with paid accounts growing double-digits in all of our geographic segments,” said Apple CFO Luca Maestri.

“We now have over 418 million paid subscriptions across the services on our platform, up 120 million from a year ago. And at this point, we expect to hit our goal of surpassing the 500 million mark already during the March quarter. Given the tremendous momentum we are experiencing across our services offerings, we are increasing our target for paid subscriptions and aim to reach 600 million before the end of calendar 2020.”