Analysts Believe Apple May Charge $20/Month For Apple Intelligence
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Some analysts predict Apple will charge for access to Apple Intelligence, although this notion seems based more on speculation than any concrete information from Apple insiders.
At the end of June, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggested there was an “opportunity” for Apple to turn its AI features into paid services, but also said “it would take time.” Gurman theorized that Apple could eventually come up with a paid “Apple Intelligence+” tier, similar to iCloud+, providing extra features beyond the free tier for a fixed monthly fee.
One analyst speaking with CNBC suggested that Apple could charge up to $20 per month for a more “premium” version of Apple Intelligence to help recoup the money it’s invested into building the feature.
Apple may try to bundle it into Apple One, perhaps at a lower cost for those who opt for an entire package of Apple services, but either way, Neil Shah of Counterpoint Research told CNBC that he believes an eventual paid tier is inevitable.
Software and services makes it more lucrative for Apple to pass it on with the Apple One subscription model.Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research
Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight, also agreed, telling CNBC that Apple has been very successful in making money from its value-added services and conditioned customers to expect the upsell.
Apple is one of the few connected devices companies that has successfully monetized the value-added services it offers. As a result, it has set a precedent with its users that they have to pay for more premium services. On this basis, it can’t be ruled out that Apple may choose to charge for more advanced features within its Apple Intelligence offering.Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight
Shah adds a more sinister implication that Apple is only making Apple Intelligence free for now so it can lock users in before hitting them with a subscription fee. Once Apple Intelligence learns more about a user’s behavior and “becomes more personalized,” they’ll not only be more tightly locked into the Apple ecosystem because they’d be starting fresh on Android, but they’ll also be more likely to pay up.
That is where you start using more and more, you get used to it more and that is where Apple monetization hits.Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research
While many analysts believe that Apple will follow in the footsteps of Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI in charging for its AI features, any future subscription tier would more likely take the form of offering specific extra features rather than just access to a more intelligent AI model like Google and OpenAI have done with Gemini and ChatGPT.
Our Take: Apple Plays the Long Game
While it would be naive to assume that Apple isn’t at least considering a paid tier for Apple Intelligence, it’s likely the company hasn’t figured out what it wants to do yet. Apple Intelligence is still in its infancy, and it will take until at least early 2025 for everything Apple has already promised to arrive, much less whatever features will make up the next generation of Apple’s AI tools in iOS 19 and beyond.
Plus, thanks to its partnership with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT, Apple likely already has a small revenue stream to offset its AI investment costs. The two companies aren’t exchanging any cash as part of the deal, but Apple is almost certainly taking a commission from ChatGPT Pro subscriptions made from Apple devices through Apple Intelligence, similar to what it does on the App Store for other subscriptions.
Either way, there’s absolutely no indication that Apple plans to charge anything for Apple Intelligence in the near future. Apple has deep pockets, and while it does make a staggering amount of money from its services business, the lion’s share of that is still App Store commissions and its lucrative Google search deal. Many of its other services are as much about selling Apple hardware as revenue streams of their own, and it’s not at all uncommon for Apple to invest in new technologies and roll those expenses into its hardware and software research and development costs.
Perhaps the best example of this is Apple’s satellite features. Emergency SOS via satellite launched with the iPhone 14 lineup in late 2022, and it turned out that Apple had launched its own satellite constellation to accomplish this — to the tune of $450 million. Despite this, Apple has yet to charge iPhone owners a penny to access satellite connectivity despite adding new features like Roadside Assistance via satellite in iOS 17 and Messaging via satellite, which will arrive with iOS 18 this fall.
Although Apple was open about its intentions to eventually charge for satellite connectivity, promising iPhone 14 users two years of free access, it later extended that by another year, and it still hasn’t said anything about what its satellite features will eventually cost or how they’ll be packaged.
Our guess is that Emergency SOS via satellite will always be free as it’s a crucial lifesaving feature. It would be a very bad look for Apple to leave someone stranded because they hadn’t paid for a subscription. However, Apple will undoubtedly require users to subscribe to access non-emergency satellite services at some point, and it’s probably no coincidence that satellite text messaging is launching the year before the clock runs out on its free satellite offer.
However, Apple has not even hinted that Apple Intelligence will cost users anything. The only fine print on the Apple Intelligence page covers its “beta” nature and the devices and languages where it will be available. If anything, what’s coming during the slow iOS 18.x rollout of Apple Intelligence will likely always be available to all iPhone, iPad, and Mac users for free, but there’s a good chance that Apple will add some optional premium features down the road that could form part of an Apple Intelligence+ subscription — someday.
