Apple’s addition of services to its world-class combination of hardware and software has been a success by almost any measure, say Loup Ventures’ Andrew Murphy and David Stokman. The firm expects continued growth for Apple’s Services segment fueled by increased adoption and the introduction of new services “that may be hiding in plain sight on our devices,” including Mail+, Maps+, Podcasts+, Stocks+, and Health+.
Andrew Murphy and David Stokman for Loup Ventures:
Apple went all-in on its Services business during a March 2019 event, in which it announced Apple TV+, News+, Apple Arcade, and Apple Card to the existing suite of Apple services (iCloud, Apple Music, Apple Pay, and App Store — a service of services).
Apple’s default apps that don’t yet offer a companion service provide a route to explore possible future services. The company could build on its existing suite of services in the following ways:
• Podcasts+ – We recently predicted that 2021 is the year Apple will take a page from Spotify’s playbook and bundle premium podcasts (Podcasts+) with Apple Music and Apple One, at no extra charge for paying subscribers
• Mail+ – Inbox management, scheduling, and many of the daily tasks we perform in the Mail app could be automated, adding sufficient value to our lives while commanding a monthly fee.
• Maps+ – We continue to believe that an Apple Car is on the product roadmap… Apple Car and Apple Maps could work together in a new service, Maps+, to help deliver the future of transportation.
• Stocks+ – Apple could replicate its success with Apple Card and offer low-fee, private, secure, simple brokerage accounts… Apple could also offer trading services similar to Robinhood, and robo-advisory services like Wealthfront.
• Health+ – The ingredients exist for Apple to deliver unique value, enhance integration across its ecosystem, and generate high-margin revenue through a health-centric service offering. Exactly how that takes shape remains unclear.
MacDailyNews Take: Much more, including further fleshing out of all five proposed future Apple services – Mail+, Maps+, Podcasts+, Stocks+, Health+ – are in the – recommended – full article.
“Worker Income+” is asking too much?
Maps+ suggestion:
This should include realtime radar and warning/watch map overlays.
This has tangible safety and planning value points for subscribers.
It’s one thing to see yourself moving on Apple Maps, it’s another, to see yourself moving into inclement weather while using Apple Maps+.
The “+” for Apple services is more about paying extra for exclusive content, not application functionality. Apple Music (“iTunes+”) adds streaming content. TV+ adds exclusive video content. And so on… Fitness+ is somewhat more functional, but a lot its value is access to exclusive workout-related content (coaching). Having choices to access exclusive content at extra cost makes sense.
So Podcasts+ makes sense. The others on this list are more functional “pluses,” like a better version of the app IF you pay extra for ongoing subscription. It’ll just tick off Apple’s hardware customers. Everyone paying for an Apple device should have the best version of Mail and Maps, not cripple-ware. And Apple (a significant portion of entire market cap) trading and giving advice about AAPL sounds compromised.
I propose Books+. The current service (previously iBooks) is in the shadow of Amazon’s Kindle + Audible. Books app and ebook store are for people who love to read. News+ is also for people who love to read. Merge them into Books+.
Yes, this exactly. No mail+, no maps+, no stocks+. Now if they wanted to provide more feature rich apps in those categories, use “pro” and charge a single upgrade fee like Logic or FCP. I want a Maps Pro that allows me to overlay custom .kmz or shape files on top of Apple’s basemaps, but that shouldn’t be part of a premium service fee.
This article scares the shit out of me.
We are all being subscription’d to death. Good lord, we already pay for AppleTV+, Netflix, Cable, HBOMAX. Then our data/voice iPhone plan, AppleWatch plan, iPad plan. Car wash, Microsoft365, gym, iClould, HelloFresh, AAA, bank account, XM Radio, etc.
You want to know why seniors have no pocket cash and feel isolated…. they can’t afford $1500 each month in subscriptions on top of shelter & utilities. They’re getting Pro’d and Plus’d and upgraded to death. My parents thought they had enough to retire until the subscriptions caught them.
Enough already.
You ain’t seen nothing yet. Just wait until IOS, MS Word, Firefox and all of the rest of the software will be subscription only
Good point. I can see Apple reinventing email, but it should be available to all Apple users. Some of the things Apple does increase the value of iPhones / iPads / Macs without paying extra.
There are lots of great ideas for improving email. Apple has a large enough user base to create a better email. Email without spam, email with a better structure for attachments, email with better hooks for organization, notification and management. Some part could be open sourced so that it would be supported as an internet standard.
They don’t have to do it all. By defining the underlying technology they leave room for themselves and third parties to produce apps with varying level of sophistication.
I just use Spark on iOS and MacOS and it is much better than Apple’s email client.