✔️ 2022-03-24 18:43:39 – Paris/France.
Apple is reportedly working on selling iPhones and iPads as part of a hardware subscription service, according to a new report from Bloombergwhose service author Mark Gurman writes could arrive next year.
The move would fit in with Apple's current trend toward subscription services as a whole. Over the past few years, Apple has increasingly focused on recurring subscriptions like Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple News Plus, Apple Fitness Plus, and Apple Arcade as key new revenue streams for the company. Many of these services have already been bundled into the company's Apple One plans.
We've already seen a similar change on the hardware front: Apple added a monthly subscription model for its AppleCare extended warranties in 2019. And Apple introduced its iPhone Upgrade Program, which allows customers to pay the combined cost of AppleCare and an iPhone over 24 months and the ability to trade in their device after 12 months of payments — since 2015. Both of these programs are already in many ways similar to a hardware subscription.
Apple already offers monthly payments for iPhone
BloombergApple's report doesn't specify how a subscription program would be significantly different from these existing services, but it's easy to imagine Apple relying on something like Apple's Upgrade Program installment model. iPhone by allowing customers to add other Apple services (or an entire Apple One plan) for a single monthly cost. Right now, you can pay Apple monthly for its services, and you can pay Apple monthly for an iPhone, but those are still separate fees and plans to manage.
It's hard to imagine that Apple will simply lend devices on a monthly basis - will you really be able to pay to "subscribe" to an iPhone for a single month, as you can to Apple TV Plus for a season of Ted lasso? Similarly, a world where Apple requires its customers to invest months of capital in a device only to return it at the end of the process seems equally unlikely.
It's possible that Apple is simply looking to cut out the middleman and expand its installment payment offerings to other products. The iPhone Upgrade Program allows customers to take out an interest-free loan from Citizens One, which they then repay during the 24-month plan. Apple also allows Apple Card customers to pay for Apple products in monthly installments without paying interest, but this too is only limited to a small subset of Apple customers. An Apple-based subscription service could eliminate these requirements and allow Apple to extend it to other hardware products as well (like the iPad or its Mac computers).
But while the details are still slim, one thing is clear: Apple's subscription ambitions are just beginning.
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SOURCE: Reviews News
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