Tim Cook at Goldman Sachs Conference

Tim Cook:

Over the long-term all phones will be smartphones and there are a lot more people in the world than 1.4 billion. And people like to upgrade regularly. This is an enormous market to get to.

We’ve sold 500 million as of the end of last year, but over 40% of that happened last year. So there’s incredible momentum. And we’ve built a great ecosystem that is also fueling a developer industry… we’ve now paid out over $8 billion to them. Innovation has all moved to tablets and smartphones, so there’s so much momentum. When you look at what we’re doing in China, it’s impressive. There are also areas where we’re not doing as well, and we view those as opportunities. When I string all of these things together, I see a wide open field.

$8 billion paid to developers through the App Store is a new figure — up one billion in just the last month alone. That implies aggregate App Store revenue of $11.5 billion, with Apple’s 30 percent rake amounting to $3.5 billion.

★ Tuesday, 12 February 2013