In September, the Apple event was held, in which Apple introduced some new features of Apple fitness+ and announced that later in this year, Apple fitness+ will be available in more countries such as Italy, Brazil, Spain and Switzerland (Rossignol, 2021).
According to Apple, Apple fitness+ is the first service built around Apple watch, which also brings studio-style workouts to other Apple products such as iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV (Apple Newsroom, 2021). It is known there is a number of people who pay for Apple services such as Apple Music. In 2020, Apple started a new idea which is providing a bundle of services called Apple One (Perlow, 2020). Apple One enables people to have access to six services, namely Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, iCloud+, Apple News+ and Apple fitness+ by just one subscription of the Premier plan. There are also two other options, the individual plan and the family plan, which provide Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade and iCloud + with 50GB and 200GB respectively (Apple, n.d.).
In this case, we can see that Apple uses the bundling strategy for the services it provided. Bundling has several benefits. For instance, it can help companies to increase revenue and brings simplicity to customers by narrowing the wide range of product or service selections for customers, which can also reduce customer’s pressure to make decisions (Zix, 2020). In April 2021, Apple has 660 million subscribers, which are the major drivers of the growing revenue in Q2(Potuck, 2021). It is assumed that the release of Apple One contributes to a larger number of subscribers and boosts the revenue growth of Apple.
The example of Apple One may indicate that bundling is a good strategy for companies that have a wide range of products and it can create simplicity for customers by saving them from making decisions.
References
Apple Newsroom. (2021). Apple Fitness+ expands availability; adds new workouts and guided Meditation. [online] Available at: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/09/apple-fitness-plus-expands-availability-adds-new-workouts-and-guided-meditation/.
Apple. (n.d.). Apple One. [online] Available at: https://www.apple.com/apple-one/.
Perlow, J. (2020). Apple One free with every iPhone? A services strategy to destroy Android. [online] ZDNet. Available at: https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-one-free-with-your-iphone-the-services-strategy-to-destroy-android/.
Potuck, M. (2021). Apple services hit 660 million subscribers with revenue growing 27%. [online] 9to5Mac. Available at: https://9to5mac.com/2021/04/28/apple-services-hit-660-million-subscribers/.
Rossignol, J. (2021). Apple Fitness+ Launching in 15 New Countries Later This Year. [online] MacRumors. Available at: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/14/apple-fitness-launching-in-15-new-countries/.
Zix (2020). 6 Benefits of Bundling Services. [online] MSSP Alert. Available at: https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-guests/6-benefits-bundling/.
Good overview of the bundling strategy Apple is using! What I would like to see is where the company would be headed next and what bundling strategies worked best in the past (look at examples such as what competitor Windows did with Office 365).