An Apple Intelligence subscription could cost $20/month
Apple Intelligence's premium features could cost between $10-20/month.
Here’s what happened: Neil Shah, a partner at Counterpoint Research which is a research firm with a strong focus on technology and manufacturing companies, told CNBC that the more premium features of Apple Intelligence could cost between $10-20/month and may bundled with Apple One— a two tier subscription bundle with (Individual, Premier) that grants access to multiple Apple services including Apple Music and TV+.
CNBC also interviewed Ben Wood, a chief of research at CCS Insights. Wood seems to think that Apple won’t have a hard time monetizing Apple Intelligence because “Apple is one of the few connected devices companies that has successfully monetized the value-added services it offers“ which is to say that Apple’s users are already used to paying for some of the 1st party services that they offer, and Apple Intelligence won’t be any different. This notion is evidenced by the fact that in total, Apple services generated $24.2 billion for the company in the June quarter alone.
Apple Intelligence+ will most likely be part of a new 3rd tier of Apple One bundle that includes the paid premium AI features, as well as an individual product subscription.
Apple’s Walled Garden and Its Antitrust case
Apple Intelligence will be another prong in Apples effort to further lock-in its users into Apple ecosystem, therefore making it harder for them to switch over to an alternative platform, a fact that Shah is aware of— “The beauty of AI is as you use [it] more and more, it learns about you, and you get locked into the model itself because you can’t bring your own model from Apple to Android.“
An Apple Intelligence subscription could cause a big headache for Apple’s lawyers and executives as they try to fight an antitrust case brought against the company by the U.S. Department of Justice as well as 16 states. The DOJ’s complaint accuses Apple of being a monopoly by suppressing competition in favor of its own offerings in order to among other things keep users locked in into its own platform.
An Apple Intelligence subscription could be used as evidence in order to reinforce the governments argument that Apple is indeed a monopoly and acts in ways to maintain that monopoly.