Julie Clover
Apple no longer plans to launch a hardware subscription service that would allow customers to “sign up” for a new iPhone every year, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports.
Gurman first shared rumors that Apple was working on a hardware subscription service back in 2022, and at the time he said Apple wanted to develop a simple system that would allow customers to pay a monthly fee to access a device for the duration of a subscription.
Offering a subscription-based iPhone would make it easier for customers who can’t afford an expensive iPhone to make monthly payments instead of buying it up front. Apple already has an iPhone upgrade program that splits the cost of the device over 12 or 24 months, but the planned subscription would have involved an ongoing monthly fee rather than payments over a set number of months.
After two years of work on the project, Apple apparently stopped development in recent months due to regulatory concerns, software bugs, and other issues. The team that developed the subscription was disbanded and moved to other projects. Apple has made some streamlining of its payment offerings this year, shutting down the Apple Pay Later installment option that had been available for less than a year.
Tags: Bloomberg, Mark Gurman[ 95 comments ]
