Apple plans to unveil a range of subscription bundles next to its new iPhones this October Bloomberg. Internationally, the bundles are referred to as “Apple One”, although this is not necessarily the name they will launch under.
A number of different tiers will be available, starting with a basic combo of Apple Music and Apple TV +, while expensive bundles will add Apple Arcade, then Apple News + to the next tier, then extra iCloud storage for the tier above.
Higher-end bundles will also report an even more invisible service for Apple’s fitness subscriptions. This will offer virtual classes and workouts accessible via an iOS app and on Apple TV, similar to Nike and Peloton services.
Bloomberg says that the bundles will be marked to families, and that they will work with Apple’s Family Sharing system, which means that each service can be accessed by up to six people. As you would expect with subscription bundles, buying them will be cheaper than buying individual services. As Bloomberg says: “For example, if a family subscribes today to all of Apple’s major services plus the highest iCloud storage space, that would cost about $ 45 a month. A new bundle could fetch more than $ 5 from it. ”
Bloomberg reports that in addition to these bundles, Apple plans to start offering new software and hardware combinations, such as a free year to include Apple Arcade with purchases of a streaming TV from Apple TV. However, Bloomberg says Apple does not plan to include monthly payment plans for iPhones or Macs directly with these bundles, a possibility that Apple CEO Tim Cook has referred to in the past.
There are no pricing specifications yet as to the exact configuration of each bundle, and it is quite possible that these details will change before the bundles are unveiled later this year.
There have been reports of Apple’s plan to offer subscription bundles since at least 2018, but they now seem much more concrete. Just last month, code was found in iOS 13.5.5 that referred to both a “bundle offer” and “bundle subscription”, and in 2019, the company experimented with a bundle for students, packing Apple Music and Apple TV + together.
Apple has in recent years been increasingly focused on returning revenue from the services of the services, especially as sales of smartphones plateau. And as Amazon has shown with Amazon Prime, which bundles faster delivery times alongside streaming music and video, regular subscriptions can provide revenue when locking customers into a company’s ecosystem. Once you have purchased Prime, it makes sense to order more from Amazon. Apple’s subscription bundles could do the same for their services and hardware.
