Morgan Stanley is reporting renewed momentum in Apple’s App Store receipts, saying data through February points to a faster growth trajectory heading into the March quarter.
In a Monday note, the firm’s analyst Erik Woodring said App Store net revenue is growing 9 percent year-over-year month-to-date, which he described as "a 230bps acceleration from January off a 700bps easier Y/Y compare." The bank calculates that quarter-to-date App Store revenue is rising 7.5 percent, leaving it "50bps behind our +8.0% Y/Y March quarter App Store forecast."
Morgan Stanley emphasized that the quarter’s outcome will depend on March following its historical seasonal pattern. "March quarter App Store revenue would end the quarter in line with our +8% Y/Y forecast if March revenue grows in line with T3Y seasonal average of 10% M/M," Woodring wrote. The bank left its March-quarter forecasts unchanged, maintaining an 8 percent year-over-year growth projection for the App Store and a 13.5 percent growth forecast for Services.
The firm noted the acceleration in App Store revenue is broadly distributed across major regions. China’s App Store revenue is reported to be growing 4 percent year-over-year after a decline in January, while the United States is up 3 percent, a 40 basis-point improvement. Japan is down 1 percent, and the rest of the world is seeing 22 percent growth.
Woodring and his team pointed to related hardware and supplier signals as corroborating indicators. They highlighted rising Mac lead times, saying they have "quickly inflected to multi-year highs" amid demand for the on-device AI tool OpenClaw. The analysts also flagged stronger Taiwan component supplier revenue in January as an additional positive datapoint, noting it points to "very robust strength in server demand coming from the largest global cloud service providers."
Morgan Stanley’s analysis ties App Store performance to both regional consumption patterns and upstream demand in hardware and cloud infrastructure, while keeping its published March-quarter growth projections intact.
Source note: Figures and quotes are from Morgan Stanley and Erik Woodring as cited in the firm’s Monday research note.