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According to Tim Cook on the earnings call he called it "active install base". Make of that what you will.

Sounds like actively used devices. Which means the number of users is lower as some/many people use more than one Apple device.

Are they counting iTunes on Windows?

Well, he didn't say happy users.

I believe it's the number of unique devices that connect to one of their services in a month, or something similar to that.

That wouldn't be a user base though. People have N apple devices each. Could be unique appleIDs to use the appstores.

Since you need an Apple ID to access their services, I'm sure it's easy to deduplicate users.

Average per customer is based on the Apple ID. User base is number of devices. Don't have a quotable source though.

Maybe distinct count of Active Apple IDs?