If you suspect Apple is heading toward offering us a single all-in subscription package, the company’s moves this week regarding Apple TV+ and, more quietly, AppleCare+, make a lot of sense.
William Gallagher for AppleInsider:
Perhaps Apple itself is looking to a future where subscriptions are the norm. If Apple has thought of this, then the company’s moves this week look very much like it putting some more parts of the jigsaw in place… Apple, at some point, is going to offer you an all-in-one subscription fee. It will be a single-price, probably family-wide, price that gets you all of Apple’s services —and an iPhone.
Right after the September 10 keynote, Apple introduced a new AppleCare+ which within certain constraints, lets you extend your regular AppleCare insurance. And, you guessed it, AppleCare+ is a monthly fee… We’d be surprised if the top end AppleCare+ monthly fee didn’t magically happen to be $9.99, which would make this fantasy all-in subscription [a top of the range iPhone and also for every Apple service] add up to $106.98.
However, we also wouldn’t be in the slightest bit surprised if Apple, at least at first, offered all of this for a straight $100 per month.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, Apple loves nines, so $99 per month gets you an iPhone and every Apple service. Presented like that, it’d be insanely irresistible. And every “new to iPhone” customer will immediately and irrevocably be steeped in Apple’s Hotel California ecosystem.
Hey, Android fake iPhone peddlers: Checkmate!
As we wrote this morning, “We bet if Apple offered iPhones along with services bundled into one monthly fee – offer tick boxes for Apple TV+, Apple News+, Apple Arcade, Apple Music, iCloud Storage, etc. – they’d have a winning sales strategy (Apple Prime) on their hands!”
We’d really like to see a way to pay for all of the Apple services we choose for one price. Give us a bunch of tick boxes and let us choose our combination of iCloud storage, Apple Music, iTunes Match, etc. and let us pay a single price for all of our choices. — MacDailyNews, October 17, 2016
As soon as Apple launches their original content video service, an “Apple Prime” will make even more sense. — MacDailyNews, August 29, 2018
Apple could make a more compelling “Prime” bundle than even Amazon can offer because their original content sounds like it will be better and Apple Music + Apple News/Texture are unmatched. If they rolled some iCloud storage deal into it, it’d be tough to resist for many, many people! — MacDailyNews, February 14, 2019
Hopefully, some sort of bundle option will also be available for us all to be able to the combine Apple services we want for a single fee, lower than the cost of subscribing to them à la carte. — MacDailyNews, March 25, 2019