Apple’s service and support package, which all products are covered by for one year, will move to a subscription thereafter – stopping the prepaid two- or three-year AppleCare+ offerings.
According to reports by Bloomberg, Apple is dropping the pay in advance option at physical retail stores and on devices and will only offer monthly and annual subscriptions. Consumers will still be able to get those multi-year plans on the online store.
The AppleCare+ subscription option has been available online since 2019. This latest move is expected to take place before the end of February 2025.
AppleCare products provide expert technical support and additional hardware service options from Apple. The tech giant stressed that because Apple makes the hardware, the operating system and many applications, only AppleCare gives customers a “one-stop service and support from Apple experts”. It added that most issues can be resolved in a single call.
Prices range from £3.49 monthly (currently £69 for two years) for an iPhone, to £34.99 monthly (previously £99 for three years) for a Mac.
Apple was ranked Elite in the RetailX Top500 Brands D2C report. A company profile in the report looks at Apple’s design-first approach to retail.
Download the report to read the full Apple profile, with H&M, Ikea, Uniqlo and Zara also studied. Each profile offers company profit and sales figures, share price and web traffic as well as a review of what makes their business exemplary.
The wider report explores how brands from around the world sell to shoppers in the 30 countries of the European Economic Area (EEA), plus the UK and Switzerland. We rank brands by footprint sizes and by performance in four value chains, which are designed to assess how brands build profitable businesses around the customer, the product, operations and capital.
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