You may soon be able to buy an iPhone 14 on a monthly subscription plan

Would you consider paying a monthly fee to always have the latest iPhone? You might get the opportunity later this year or early next because Apple is preparing a subscription service for its phones.

It seems everyone wants to get on the “subscription” based sales model. Following Microsoft’s lead with Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions, there are any number of subscription-based products today – digital (think Netflix, Hulu and many other streaming services) and product based subscriptions like Amazon Prime, the Dollar Shave Club as well as food service models like HelloFresh.

The iPhone 14 line probably either costs the same as the iPhone 13 line did at launch or maybe a bit more, but either way these are very expensive phones. However, there might soon be a new way to buy them that lets you spread out the cost.

Apple has been rumored to be working on a subscription service for iPhones and potentially other hardware, and the company might roll the service out either later this year or early next year. Apparently, Apple is rumored to be actively testing this new service.

This service wouldn’t just be a way to pay off your iPhone gradually, it would be an ongoing subscription that you’d pay for as long as you keep the phone, which would likely include the option to swap your handset out for a new model, and would apparently integrate with the company’s Apple One software subscriptions.

So, for a (probably high, but currently unknown) monthly fee, you’d have ongoing access to the latest Apple hardware, and software services such as Apple Music and Apple Fitness Plus.

When this subscription service might land is anyone’s guess but the next likely opportunity for an announcement would be with the new iPad Pro 2022 and the new iPad 2022, which are rumored to be appearing at an event in October.

So why wasn’t this launched at last week’s iPhone 14 announcement?
It seems odd that Apple didn’t announce its subscription service during the iPhone 14 announcement, since the company could have attracted a lot of sign-ups from customers who will now instead purchase their new phone in the usual way, either direct from Apple or via a carrier.

It appears that Apple decided against this in order to “reduce launch day complexity. After all, it will add an entirely new way to buy an iPhone.”

That might have been the right call too, as the iPhone 14 ordering process has been anything but smooth. As reported by 9to5Mac, delivery estimates for many models quickly slipped into October, and reportedly some people who were told they’d get their phone on launch day (September 16) saw that date slip away.

Plus, there were reports of various errors during checkout, with some customers inadvertently purchasing multiple phones, as they were told an order had failed when it had actually completed.

So, while it might have been nice to have the option to order an iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro or iPhone 14 Pro Max on subscription, adding another complication to an already glitchy ordering process likely wouldn’t have gone well.