iPhone 'subscription' is Apple's most diabolical business plan yet

Who loves iPhones? Who loves new iPhones? Who wants to have the latest and greatest iPhone in their hands every time an Apple iPhone launch event comes around? And who can afford $32 a month?

If your answer to all the above questions is "everyone, duh," congratulations: You understand the tremendous economic viability of Apple's new "upgrade plan." This is a relatively inoffensive name for what might as well be called an iPhone subscription service — or a way for Apple to more efficiently hoover money out of your wallet.

Do the math, and it's not hard to see why switching iPhone users to a subscription is a diabolically brilliant business plan. Let's say that, like me, you're on the "S" cycle and were planning to buy an iPhone 6S while re-upping your two-year carrier contract. That would set me back $199 to $399, depending on how much storage I want onboard.

That's the equivalent of giving Apple somewhere between $8.30 and $16.63 a month for the next 24 months. Not nearly enough for the world's wealthiest company! You think that stock price is going to keep levitating higher if you don't put more cash in the Apple bank?

But now here comes an Apple Store employee telling me I don't have to limit myself to the every-other-year carrier cycle. I can participate in every iPhone upgrade, without the worry of having to think about it. What's the cost? Less than a basic cable subscription.

Suddenly, I find myself contemplating a $32.45 to $42.50 a month payment — or up to 400% of what I was giving Apple before. And all that's on top of what I'm paying the carriers while locking myself into another two-year contract. (The carriers, who have similar pay-per-month plans of their own, haven't announced any kind of discount for using the Apple plan.)

Granted, I'm getting double the number of iPhones that I got before, so maybe we're only (!) talking about a 200% markup. Getting the phone unlocked is cool; that makes it easier to use abroad. And $99 Apple Care+ is a nice extra to throw in for free, though many of us wouldn't have paid for Apple Care+ given the option.

But that's not the only factor at play here. I'm also turning those iPhones back in at the end of a year, whereas before I could have resold that phone — and gotten a large chunk of change back. Change that wasn't going into Apple's coffers.

Also, I'm now a certified subscriber — and as Amazon can tell you, after years of trying to drive its customers into the Amazon Prime program, subscribers are catnip as far as investors are concerned. That's because they are guaranteed to spend more.

Like a loan shark, Apple always finds a way to turn the screws on its customers, but this surely counts as the company's most usurious innovation yet. The only difference is, with a loan shark, we're not smiling our way to a lower level of disposable income.

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