Iphone 13 Review HeroSource: Joseph Keller / iMore

What you need to know

  • Apple could be considering offering iPhones and other products via subscription.
  • Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that Apple could soon let people subscribe to a hardware package for the first time.
  • It isn't known when, or even if, this will become something Apple offers to customers. But Gurman says next year is a possibility.

Apple is reportedly working on a new subscription service like nothing else it has done before. This subscription isn't about services or software — it's about hardware and you could get a future iPhone via a monthly subscription instead of buying it outright.

The move, which is reported by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, would see people pay for iPhones and other hardware via a monthly subscription for the first time. The project is said to be in development which means it could change or be canned entirely, but Gurman says it's being worked on right now.

Apple Inc. is working on a subscription service for the iPhone and other hardware products, a move that could make device ownership similar to paying a monthly app fee, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Apple currently allows people to do something similar to this via the iPhone Upgrade Program. It isn't immediately clear how this new service would differ, but it seems likely that users would simply pay a monthly fee and get whatever the current iPhone happens to be. Expect there to be different tiers which would then get people into either the standard devices or their Pro variants — think iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro, for example.

Details are still scarce but this isn't the first time we've heard of these kinds of plans — analysts were making similar subscription noises in 2020, too.

Gurman believes that the subscription could tie into Apple One and AppleCare+ in some way, while he also mentions that this could all launch "by next year."