From Nasdaq:

Apple has reached fame worldwide for the excellence of its products and has built an empire, bringing in billions of dollars in earnings every year with a record high earnings per share in the most recent quarter. The company also has a services business, and in the recent quarter, services earned the company $23 billion.

In the recent quarter, products brought in $96 billion in revenue for Apple, while services earned $23 billion. The cost of sales for products in the quarter totaled more than $58 billion compared to a cost of sales of a little over $6 billion for services. Apple’s services have a 70% gross margin compared to the 37% gross margin for products.

Apple recently outpaced Samsung to take the biggest share of the global smartphone market with the iPhone now holding more than 24% of the market compared with Samsung’s 16%. The growth in products equals additional potential customers for Apple’s services, from payment services to cloud storage.

The services business could be an extremely valuable one for Apple because it represents recurring revenue from customers and has what it takes to boost earnings and share performance over time. The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now, and Apple wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.



Read more: This 1 Number Points to Apple’s Next Growth Driver