Apple launches app for party invitations in recurring revenue push

Apple on Tuesday released a new app for creating invitations and sending them to contacts. The app is called Apple Invites.

Users can create events, such as birthdays, graduations and housewarming parties, and manage RSVPs and guest lists through the app. Apple Invites is also available on the web.

While users will not need an iPhone to RSVP to events, they will need a paid iCloud+ subscription to send invites.

The launch is the latest example of Apple’s services strategy, where the company introduces new paid subscriptions that are marketed to its installed base of 2.35 billion active devices. Apple’s Services division has become the company’s second-largest business behind the iPhone, reporting $25 billion in sales in the December quarter.

Services has also become a big source of Apple’s profit, with a gross margin of 74%. The growth of Apple’s services division is helping Apple’s overall margins expand in recent quarters after years of staying flat. Apple’s services business also includes its search deal with Google, Apple Pay payments and device warranties.

With Invites, Apple is taking on Partiful, a startup founded in 2020 that allows users to make and send event invites. Partiful did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment, but it posted on social media a joke about Apple’s app being a copycat.

An iCloud+ subscription starts at $1 per month for 50GB of storage, and it is included in Apple’s other subscription bundles, ranging up to a $38 per month subscription that also includes the company’s TV service, Apple Music and access to games, fitness classes and news.

Invites also includes Apple Intelligence, the company’s suite of artificial intelligence software. Apple Intelligence can generate images for invites and help write the invitation with the company’s Writing Tools. Apple Intelligence also has the ability to share a photo album or playlist with an event’s guest list.

While Apple does not charge individually for many of its iCloud+ services, it now has a host of paid features intended to get users to upgrade from free storage. That subscription service offers a VPN-style relay service for private browsing, custom email domains for iCloud, local security camera storage and the ability to generate burner emails.

Apple does not disclose how many iCloud+ subscribers it has. The company last week said that it has one billion subscribers, but that figure includes subscriptions to apps through the App Store in addition to its direct iCloud subscriptions.