One of the things John Gruber and I discussed on my visit to The Talk Show last week was the concept of an Apple version of Amazon Prime. Pay one price, get a bunch of services in a bundle.
For Amazon, Prime includes free shipping, music, and Prime Video. What might an Apple Prime include?
This Reddit post asked if $2000 a year would be worth the price, if you got:
- New iPhone every year
- New Apple Watch every year
- New iPad Pro every 18 months
- New MacBook Pro every year
- All Apple services (Music, 2TB iCloud, Arcade, TV+, etc.)
An interesting proposition. One tweak I’d make to that model is to allow for different hardware levels. Price it to allow for a new base model iPhone 11, MacBook Air, and Apple Watch, for example. Then, you’d pay up to move to a Pro subscription, which would allow an iPhone Pro, MacBook Pro, perhaps a ceramic Apple Watch.
Difficult to price, difficult for a consumer to value properly. At the very least, I’d price it monthly, rather than yearly as Amazon does.
And more likely a reality, how about a yearly “all the services” bundle, which would include:
- Apple Music
- Apple News+
- Apple Arcade
- Apple TV+
- 2TB iCloud
Priced aggressively, that would bring subscriber numbers up for all Apple services, and also provide a predictable revenue stream. It also has the advantage of getting people to try out services they might not pay for otherwise.
Personally, I’d sign up for the services bundle right now.