An extremely interesting analysis was published today by the Romanian analyst Horace Dediu, comparing Apple's revenues from services and the iTunes Store with those of Hollywood. We are talking about a comparison made over a period of several years, including 2016, the year in which Apple surpassed Hollywood for the first time in revenue.
For starters, you can see that Apple's earnings include everything sold through the iTunes Store, along with iCloud, iTunes Match, Apple Care, plus other services and revenue from licenses. All these services generate revenues of almost 45 billion dollars for Apple, and here we are talking about the year 2016, they being smaller in the past years.
All the films released in cinemas around the world recorded revenues of approximately 38 billion dollars in 2016, so less than Apple's services. The difference is considerable and proves that Apple already earns more money than the Hollywood production houses, but only from the online services they offer.
The comparison is extremely interesting if we take into account the fact that in 2016 Apple invested in the production of TV shows for Apple Music. Apple can invest billions upon billions of dollars in the creation of digital multimedia content, and its power in this segment is fully revealed by the graphic visible below.
