Apple has almost 800 million iTunes account, with around half of them linked to credit cards that allow users one-click purchases at the Apple App store and iTunes.
During its fiscal 2014 second-quarter conference call, Apple announced that iTunes is set to hit the 800 million-mark, a growth of nearly 40% from the 575 million accounts announced in June 2013. Multiplying these figures, we arrive at a sum of 710,000 new iTunes accounts created every day. If this trend continues, Apple may very well reach its one billionth iTunes user by the end of 2014.
Apple also reported that customers spent $5.2 billion in iTunes sales, 24% up from customer spending a year ago and half a billion dollars more than last quarter's sales. It now has 70 billion cumulative app downloads, which is 5 billion downloads up from January's figures.
With more than 400 million credit cards on file just from iTunes alone, Apple is well-equipped to put into action its plan to create a massive mobile payments system.
Speculations abound that Apple is set to put up its own electronic payments system so that customers can use their iOS devices to pay for digital apps and physical goods online as well as in retail stores using the information stored in their iTunes accounts.
In January 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple's App Store and iTunes chief Eddy Cue met with mobile payments executives to discuss their plans. Apple also installed its Bluetooth-assisted iBeacon in its stores to allow customers to pay through a secure mobile system, eliminating the need to deal with a salesperson.
Apparently, Apple is also negotiating with Paypal, which is reportedly willing to white-label its payment service for Apple rebranding, based on a report made by Re/code.
Apple raises expectations for the next quarter as this quarter's performance beat analyst predictions. Stocks went up by 8.1% to $568.76 in after-hours trading as Apple posted earnings of $10.2 billion in net profits on a revenue of $10.2 billion, up from last quarter's $9.5 billion in profits on a revenue of $43.5 billion.
Apple executives attribute the earnings increase to increased iPhone sales, which jumped to 43.7 million iPhones sold during the March quarter, again exceeding the projected 38 million sales.
"We're very proud of our quarterly results, especially our strong iPhone sales and record revenue from services," said [video] Apple CEO Tim Cook during the quarterly conference call.
"We're eagerly looking forward to introducing more new products and services that only Apple could bring to market," he added.
Read more: Apple headed to NFC and mobile payments?
