Apple Likely Won't Charge for Apple Intelligence Features Until At Least 2027It will likely be years before Apple Intelligence has a compelling enough feature set that people will pay for,
Bloomberg's
Mark Gurman said in this week's
Power On newsletter. Apple Intelligence is still so new that Gurman expects it will "take three years" for Apple to create a product that's worth charging for, and even that "may be the best-case scenario."
Gurman
suggested last month that Apple's long-term plan is to develop something like Apple Intelligence+, with add-on features that users would pay a monthly fee to access. Apple already has a tiered subscription setup for
iCloud, so Apple Intelligence could work similar to that.
‌iCloud‌ provides 5GB of free storage to all users, but for a fee, ‌iCloud‌+ subscription plans include more storage and also access to features like ‌iCloud‌ Private Relay. In the future, basic Apple Intelligence access could continue to be free, with more advanced features requiring a subscription. OpenAI and other companies charge for AI queries and image generation after a set free limit due to the computing power and costs associated with AI.
As of right now, the first Apple Intelligence features
are only partially available in the iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and
macOS Sequoia 15.1 betas. Apple has added Writing Tools, some basic
Siri improvements, smart replies in Messages and Mail, and a few other features like a Memory Maker option in
Photos, but Image Playground, Genmoji, and the bulk of the ‌Siri‌ upgrades
won't be coming until later in 2024 and 2025.
In addition to fully rolling out the first Apple Intelligence features that were announced at WWDC 2024, Apple still needs to work to expand the functionality to more countries, including China and the European Union. The features that Apple showed off in June likely won't all be available until 2025, and there's no word yet on when it might expand to more countries (including other languages), so it's not hard to see how it could take until 2027 or beyond to have a robust product.
As another reference point, Apple introduced Emergency SOS via satellite alongside the
iPhone 14 in 2022, a feature that the company plans to eventually charge a fee to use, but it will be at least 2025 before the first
iPhone owners have to pay for it. Apple's fee for Emergency SOS has not yet been announced.
When Apple does start charging for Apple Intelligence, it could be baked into existing ‌iCloud‌+ plans or included as part of
Apple One, Apple's subscription bundle. Counterpoint Research analyst Neil Shah recently speculated that Apple could charge between $10 and $20 for Apple Intelligence, with the fee rolled into an ‌Apple One‌ plan. The basic ‌Apple One‌ plan is priced at $19.95 per month right now, and it includes 50GB ‌iCloud‌+ storage,
Apple TV+,
Apple Music, and
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Apple Likely Won't Charge for Apple Intelligence Features Until At Least 2027
