I thought they already had a program that sort of did this and allowed you to upgrade hardware every year for a certain cost. Wasn’t it called the Apple Upgrade Program or something like that.

Yeah I found it…

You pay for your iPhone in 24 monthly installments with 0% interest. After making 12 payments (equivalent to one year), you become eligible to upgrade to the newest iPhone model. To upgrade, you simply trade in your current iPhone and start a new 24-month plan with the latest model.

This sure sounds very similar to a hardware subscription model.

I am surprised they shut down this initiative. I would assume it would offer more revenue and more predictability. It definitely wouldn’t work everywhere (lower income countries have longer refresh cycles and people tend to avoid subscriptions), but I could see this working in US market.

Seems the main drivers for shutting down this program were carrier relationships (a critical piece in the US from my understanding) and regulatory concerns. I am assuming regulatory concerns would not be relevant anymore with the new US administration, so perhaps Apple thought it was too risky to disrupt carrier relationships.