To Change the Game, Apple Desperately Needs an All-in-One Service Bundle

There’s a good chance that you might have subscription fatigue. According to a recent survey, nearly half of digital consumers do.

Many of us subscribe to Hulu, Netflix, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Premium, Amazon Prime, or one of the many other subscription services out there. And, for many of us, that’s starting to be both unwieldy and expensive.

That could pose a problem for Apple, who recently announced several new services-based platforms. It might especially be a problem as the iPhone’s dominance as a growth driver for the company wanes. In fact, some analysts predict that services will overtake the iPhone as Apple’s primary cash cow.

There’s probably a good reason why Apple didn’t mention pricing for any of its upcoming services beyond Apple News+. There’d likely be a sticker shock situation. And in an era where consumers are already feeling the subscription fatigue, that doesn’t exactly bode well for Apple.

Apple can’t expect the majority of its users to pay for several more services when they’re already forking over cash for Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. On the other side of the spectrum, it’s extremely unrealistic for Apple to expect customers to ditch Netflix for Apple TV+. The latter service is unproven and still in its infancy.

This is exactly why Apple needs to consider an “all-in-one” subscription bundle. Take Amazon Prime as an example. Users pay $12.99 a month or $119 a year. For that price, they get:

• Two-day free shipping.
• Unlimited cloud photo storage.
• Access to a wide variety of movies, TV shows and original content
• A 5% cash back perk for its credit card holders
• An ebooks lending library; among many other perks.

That’s all for roughly $2 more than what an Apple News+ or Apple Music subscription costs.

If Apple really wants its services to succeed, it has to adopt a similar model. It won’t sway anyone to Apple TV+ if the original content platform costs $10.99 on its own, with no additional perks.

Apple can pull this off, too. No matter how much production costs are for Apple TV+ or Apple Arcade, the Cupertino tech giant has a war chest full of cash that could allow it to lose money on a subscription bundle initially. Plus, Apple would still have the revenue from its hardware products to rely on.

And there have been sporadic reports that Apple is considering this type of subscription combo. An Apple user could pay $19.99 a month (an admittedly optimistic estimate) to get Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, upgraded iCloud storage and Apple News+. That would be an attractive offer for existing Apple subscribers.

And if the quality of Apple’s upcoming services exceeds expectations, it could even sway users to buy an iPhone or an iPad to get access to the subscription.

It would be a win-win for Apple and it’s consumers. And looking at the subscription and tech industry as it stands now, it may just be one of the only ways forward for Apple.

Learn More: 4 Streaming Services You’ll Love (That Are Actually Cheaper Than Netflix)