The iPhone is no longer Apple’s most important product

Great that they&#x27;ve been able to grow their services revenue, but a huge percent of that is driven by iPhone owners subscribing to things.<p>Headline is misleading at best, if the iPhone were to suddenly lose their market to Android phones, most of that subscription revenue would dry up too.<p>Music and Arcade I&#x27;d expect are vastly phone-based. TV might have the Apple TV as a significant subscriber base, and Music admittedly has an android client, but I&#x27;d be shocked if iPhone users weren&#x27;t the majority of all of those subscriptions.

I think iPhone sales are slowing because the devices have become more durable and last longer. People aren&#x27;t abandoning their iPhones, they&#x27;re just using them for 3 and 4 years instead of replacing hem every 18-24 months under carrier contracts. The iPhone 6 is still a very capable smartphone five years on, provided you&#x27;ve replaced the battery in the meantime. The same couldn&#x27;t be said of the 3GS in 2013.<p>And this is where services and wearables come in to pick up the slack, which is arguably more consumer friendly than building devices that barely last two years.

The iPhone is still THE MOST important product for Apple.<p>No iPhone means no services and no wearable sales.<p>The iPad may sell independently of the iPhone and Macs would as well, but they are both significantly smaller than the iPhone market.<p>Apple appears to believe they&#x27;ve saturated their addressable market, and their best bet for growth is to sell more to their existing customer base.<p>I suspect we will see a shift in their marketing as well. The general ads which would attract new users to the iPhone platform will reduce, and the focus will be more on getting existing iPhone users to upgrade, or buy additional services&#x2F;products.

I use an android phone, I&#x27;d buy an apple phone in a heartbeat if it didn&#x27;t cost as much. They just keep raising the price too, which is ridiculous.<p>I get its a premium product, but they&#x27;ve priced themselves out of so many peoples budgets at this point I think.

What&#x27;s mind blowing to me is they could easily double their already respectable Mac revenue by simply undoing some of the Ive-induced idiocy like keys with no travel, dongle infestation, touch bar that distracts when you look at the main screen, or hinge which breaks if you open&#x2F;close your laptop a lot. I hope this can actually happen now.<p>And their services themselves have considerable potential given that currently most people just use storage and music.

Well, new iPhone sales may not fuel the future growth of revenue for the company. Yet, the existing base of iPhone devices is definitely fueling the revenue growth for the company&#x27;s new and future services.<p>Rare are the non-iPhone owners who choose Apple Music, or Apple TV... The iPhone is the gateway to that walled garden.

Terrible headline. iPhone is still by far Apple’s most important product. Just because it doesn’t account for the majority of the company’s revenue doesn’t demote it. Some other product would have to be more important. But what is that? The article never says.

If they can&#x27;t really compete on engineering they are done. Everybody can pretend services and style and brand makes up for it but it don&#x27;t. They were built on engineering and without it and leadership to actually do something it&#x27;s just a matter of time. The rate might be faster than expected. Looks like it to me.

Sales are slowing because they stopped innovating and give us the same exact device for four years in a row. Every once in a while the apple sheep wake up a little and stop buying until they add another camera then gobble the next device up. I’ll ativk with my X until they actually do something innovative. Maybe they can figure out how to copy notchless androids by 2025 or so?

I mostly agree. I am finding Apple Services to be much improved and I often leave my iPhone at home and just wear my Apple Watch.<p>I hope I don’t sound too judgemental, but every time I see a room full of people where most everyone is staring into their phone I question if they are really making best use of their time in the wonderful world that we live in.

So they&#x27;re going to bank on the $60k desktop or the $4k laptop vs. the $1500 phone?<p>I guess there&#x27;s always beats with $300 headphones too.

The Apple watch is the only other device with the popularity to kind of sell Apple services. People aren&#x27;t buying Apple&#x27;s smart home solutions. I really wish Apple services were more broadly sold over other platforms.

Beginning of the end. IBM, HP, Oracle - once tech companies start making more money from services than products, they lose something and start to decline in relevance.<p>I would include Microsoft in that, but they started making things again.

Apple are excellent at figuring out what &quot;the next big thing&quot; is. The fact that none of us know what that could possibly be is kind of exciting to be honest.

iPhone may still be an important product to Apple. But the competition is too high nowadays because of the cheap Android mobiles which provide similar features like iPhone.

Not really interested in iPhone development anymore since mine already meets my needs.<p>The Macs, on the other hand, have so much room for improvement.

One could almost say they&#x27;ve leveraged their monopoly position in phone platforms to expand into additional markets...

For those who don&#x27;t want to read through, they&#x27;re saying it&#x27;s services, Mac, and iPad.

Apple is the new IBM!!!

yeah not because they made a more important product but because people aren&#x27;t buying the iphones like they used to

Apple products are no longer durable, well-made or a good value, so their &quot;services&quot; are now required to keep them operable, which explains why said &quot;services&quot; revenue is now more important than purchase price. Think of Apple products as American-made Mercedes rather than a Volvo.