Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, had a conversation with German publication Stern regarding the 2019 iPhones and the Apple TV+ subscription service at a visit to the Blinkist office. For the uninitiated, Blinkist is an app that provides brief summaries for books. The meeting mainly involved discussing the pricing strategy the Cupertino giant had followed with its latest phones.
“We always try to keep our prices as low as possible and fortunately we were able to lower the price of the iPhone this year”, said Cook. This might be a bit controversial statement considering the usage “as low as possible” but yeah, we did see a $50 price drop in the base model of the iPhone 11 when compared to iPhone XR launched last year which has similar specifications.
The comparatively low price even reflected on the company’s Apple TV+ video streaming subscription service. The family plan of Apple TV+ is priced at $4.99 which is cheaper than the basic plan offered by Netflix in the US. Similarly, in India, the service costs just Rs.99 while the basic Netflix plan starts at Rs.199. Cook says that Netflix is not worried about Apple TV+ as video streaming services can coexist.“Many people use multiple services and we are now trying to become one of them.”, said Cook.
When asked about Apple facing legal issues for trying to establish a monopoly in the iOS app market, he replied as follows: “No reasonable person would ever call Apple a monopolist. We have 30 to 40 apps – versus more than two million others”. He even emphasized the fact that customers are being offered an experience that makes App Store a trustworthy place to buy apps and customers could easily access any content they desire through the browser.
So, what do you think of Apple’s new pricing strategy? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
