This is an interesting article from Wired Magazine. The premise is that people don’t want to own things anymore and the brands that they mention are Apple/Amazon. The examples they give are content: music and books. But we’re also seeing this with the rise of Lyft and car2go. My opinion is that people are giving up on owning things because of the cost and because they can’t keep up. Things get updated so frequently – especially smartphones – and it gets expensive to stay up-to-date. So what could a company like Apple do to combat this trend? Simple. Let people subscribe to their brand.
This model is actually pretty simple and would be reserved for their best customers. A subscriber would pay ~$2k a month and receive the most up-to-date Apple products as they became available. Apple Watches, iPhones, Macbooks, iPads, etc. Apple would format the new machines for them and manage their iCloud accounts. The used Apple products would enter the secondary market and it’s pretty easy to imagine, Amazon handling these sales.
I’m pretty sure Tim Cook does NOT read my blog so this little slice of brilliance will once again go unnoticed.
