> Budgeting $69-99 once every 3-4 years hardly seems like it's going to nuke their business from orbit.
Apple's business model partially depends on selling people a new phone every few years. If people switch to battery replacements in place of new phones in large quantities, that is going to significantly hurt their business model.
That’s not an accident, they spent a lot of effort building up their portfolio when this trend was obviously unavoidable. They’d love it if you buy a new phone every year but they’re almost as happy if you keep the same phone for 5 years, buy apps, and subscribe to Apple One. One of the really big questions is what impact the EU DMA will have on this strategy: a lot of what’s kept them ahead of Android on things like CPUs is the geyser of App Store cash stabilizing revenue for long-term commitments.
Interestingly, it was recently revealed that 22% of their services income is comprised of payments from Google to keep their search engine as the default in iOS / Safari. Soon to disappear given the antitrust case.
If this becomes the dominant source of revenues, it makes sense for them to make the phone more repairable and to have a longer lifetime - but then this dominance have to really show, otherwise it is a future revenue instead of a present one.
Apple's business model partially depends on selling people a new phone every few years. If people switch to battery replacements in place of new phones in large quantities, that is going to significantly hurt their business model.